Kinetics of conformational transitions of a single polymer chain

We seek to provide a general strategy to permit the study of non-equilibrium aspects of conformational transitions in various types of heteropolymers. The theoretical methods we have developed rely mainly on the Gaussian self-consistent approach that replaces the exact non-linear Langevin equation by a linear stochastic ensemble with unknown time-dependent parameters determined in a self-consistent way. We discuss possible applications of the method to conformational transitions of biopolymers such as DNA and protein folding.