EMERGENCE OF REGULAR SUPERSTRUCTURES IN MACROMOLECULES

A general method is described in which the harmonic analysis of pertur bations is applied to the study of superstructures of macromolecular c hains. The theoretical approach employed has been to apply harmonic pe rturbations on the conformational parameters in macromolecular helices of various periodicities and to study the overall variation in struct ure and its dependency on the periodicity of the perturbation. The res ults clearly show that when these perturbations do not contain harmoni cs close to the fundamental periodicities of the polymer chain, the co nsequent structural effects remain localized and are not productive at a superstructural level. Furthermore, the features of these superstru ctures are dependent only on the amplitude of the fundamental periodic ity component of the perturbation and are generated by topologically e quivalent transformations. These findings enable us to devise a model to study and identify transconformational pathways leading to global v ariations in the structure of the macromolecular chain.