FIGURE 6.
Dimensionless protein extension time versus dimensionless force applied
The other dimensionless parameters are held constant:
and
Kramers' analytical formula for the dimensionless time in the specific case of a potential with a cusp at the energy barrier (inverse of the dimensionless kinetic rate of Kramers (11) is expressed in our notation as
. Its validity is restricted to low
Method i is based on Howard (21), method ii on Schulten et al. (12), method iii on Kramers (11) and Evans and Ritchie (14), and method iv is a finer estimate of the extension time based on method ii (see text for details). Method iii is also only valid for low
therefore results for large forces (beyond the range of validity) are represented by a thinner, dotted line.