Equilibrium phase diagram and thermal responses of charged DNA‑virus rod‑suspensions at low ionic strengths
The collective behaviour of DNA is important for exploring new types of bacteria and the means of detection, which is of great importance to the understanding of interactions between DNAs in living systems. How they self-organize is a physical common phenomenon for broad ranges of thermodynamic systems. In this work, the equilibrium phase diagrams of charged chiral rods (fd viruses) at low ionic strengths (below a few mM) are provided to demonstrate both replicas of (or self-organized) twist orders and replica symmetry breaking near high concentration glass-states.
By varying the ionic strengths, it appears that a critical ionic strength is obtained below 1–2 mM salt, where the twist and freezing of nematic domains diverge. Also, the microscopic relaxation is revealed by the ionic strength-dependent effective Debye screening length. At a fixed low ionic strength, the local orientations of twist are shown by two different length scales of optical pitch, in the chiral nematic N* phase and the helical domains HD, for low and high concentration, respectively.
(Published in Scientific Reports | (2021) 11:3472 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82653-y)
