Denaturation of Heterogeneous DNA
Statistical Mechanics
2009-10-30 v3 q-bio
Abstract
The effect of heterogeneous sequence composition on the denaturation of double stranded DNA is investigated. The resulting pair-binding energy variation is found to have a negligible effect on the critical properties of the smooth second order melting transition in the simplest (Peyrard-Bishop) model. However, sequence heterogeneity is dramatically amplified upon adopting a more realistic treatment of the backbone stiffness. The model yields features of ``multi-step melting'' similar to those observed in experiments.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9701117,
title = {Denaturation of Heterogeneous DNA},
author = {D. Cule and T. Hwa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9701117},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, LaTeX, text and figures also available at http://matisse.ucsd.edu/~hwa