Conformational process and cooperativity effects in chain molecules

The cooperativity of the torsional displacements in the conformational transitions of oligomeric chains has been analyzed theoretically in terms of a master equation for the configurational jumps derived from a multidimensional diffusion equation. A prototype model constructed as a linear array of rotors interacting according to a bistable potential has been used to obtain simple analytical expressions for the transition frequencies in the limit of an infinite chain. The problem of the gauche-trans conformational processes in phospholipid chains has been faced by a Monte Carlo approach applied to the evaluation of the kinetic rates for the transitions occurring at each specific segment of the chain.