Kinky DNA in solution: Small angle scattering study of a nucleosome positioning sequence
Abstract
DNA is a flexible molecule, but the degree of its flexibility is subject to debate. The commonly-accepted persistence length of \AA\ is inconsistent with recent studies on short-chain DNA that show much greater flexibility but do not probe its origin. We have performed X-ray and neutron small-angle scattering on a short DNA sequence containing a strong nucleosome positioning element, and analyzed the results using a modified Kratky-Porod model to determine possible conformations. Our results support a hypothesis from Crick and Klug in 1975 that some DNA sequences in solution can have sharp kinks, potentially resolving the discrepancy. Our conclusions are supported by measurements on a radiation-damaged sample, where single-strand breaks lead to increased flexibility and by an analysis of data from another sequence, which does not have kinks, but where our method can detect a locally enhanced flexibility due to an -domain.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1809.09335,
title = {Kinky DNA in solution: Small angle scattering study of a nucleosome positioning sequence},
author = {Torben Schindler and Adrián González and Ramachandran Boopathi and Marta Marty Roda and Lorena Romero-Santacreu and Andrew Wildes and Lionel Porcar and Anne Martel and Nikos Theodorakopoulos and Santiago Cuesta-López and Dimitar Angelov and Tobias Unruh and Michel Peyrard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.09335},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
24 pages, 10 figures