Structurally specific thermal fluctuations identify functional sites for DNA transcription
Soft Condensed Matter
2007-05-23 v2 Biological Physics
Genomics
Abstract
We report results showing that thermally-induced openings of double stranded DNA coincide with the location of functionally relevant sites for transcription. Investigating both viral and bacterial DNA gene promoter segments, we found that the most probable opening occurs at the transcription start site. Minor openings appear to be related to other regulatory sites. Our results suggest that coherent thermal fluctuations play an important role in the initiation of transcription. Essential elements of the dynamics, in addition to sequence specificity, are nonlinearity and entropy, provided by local base-pair constraints.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0309157,
title = {Structurally specific thermal fluctuations identify functional sites for DNA transcription},
author = {G. Kalosakas and K. Ø. Rasmussen and A. R. Bishop and C. H. Choi and A. Usheva},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0309157},
year = {2007}
}