Conformational statistics of random polyelectrolyte chain in theta region and transition to collapse: Qualitative study

Abstract

We study conformational properties of the polyelectrolyte chain with prescribed Bernoullian distribution of positive and negative charges on its backbone. For the case when the total charge of the chain is almost zero, the charge fluctuations are of special importance leading to the collapse transition qualitatively different from that expected for the uncharged homopolymers. The present case of collapse transition directly demonstrates the biological significance of nonuniformly charged polymers.