Ideal-Chain Collapse in Biopolymers
  A conceptual difficulty in the Hooke's-law description of ideal Gaussian polymer-chain elasticity is sometimes apparent in analyses of experimental data or in physical models designed to simulate the behavior of biopolymers. The problem, the tendency of a chain to collapse in the absence of external forces, is examined in the following examples: DNA-stretching experiments, gel electrophoresis, and protein folding. We demonstrate that the application of a statistical-mechanically derived repulsive force, acting between the chain ends, whose magnitude is proportional to the absolute temperature and inversely proportional to the scalar end separation removes this difficulty. 
Richard M. Neumann