The Effect of Surface Adsorption on Tertiary Structure Formation in Helical Polymers

Formation of tertiary structures made up of helical polymer segments is modified by the introduction of a substrate on which the polymer is adsorbed. The effect of a substrate on biological systems such as helical structures may have been important in the formation of early life. We perform replica-exchange Monte Carlo simulations to study this effect on formation of helical structures in corse grained polymers – comparing the structural phase space for both adsorbed and non-adsorbed helical polymers. For this purpose a generic, hybrid coarse-grained model for polymer adsorption has been employed.