DNA as a one-dimensional chiral material: Application to the structural transition between B form and Z form
Abstract
A dynamical model is presented for chiral change in DNA molecules. The model is an extension of the conventional elastic model which incorporates the structure of base pairs and uses a spinor representation for the DNA configuration together with a gauge principle. Motivated by a recent experiment reporting chiral transitions between right-handed B-DNA and left-handed Z-DNA [M. Lee, et. al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 107, 4985 (2010)], we analyze the free energy for the particular case of linear DNA with an externally applied torque. The model shows that there exists, at low temperature, a rapid structural change depending on the torque exerted on the DNA, which causes switching in B and Z domain sizes. This can explain the frequent switches of DNA extension observed in experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1102.3313,
title = {DNA as a one-dimensional chiral material: Application to the structural transition between B form and Z form},
author = {Teruaki Okushima and Hiroshi Kuratsuji},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.3313},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
7 pages, 5 figures