A mean-field theory for predicting single polymer collapse induced by neutral crowders.

Macromolecular crowding can induce the collapse of a single long polymer into a globular form due to depletion forces of entropic nature. This phenomenon has been shown to play a significant role in compacting the genome within the bacterium into a well-defined region of the cell known as the nucleoid. Motivated by the biological significance of this process, numerous theoretical and computational studies have searched for the primary determinants of the behavior of polymer-crowder phases.