Related papers: Modeling DNA beacons at the mesoscopic scale
The flexibility of short DNA fragments is studied by a Hamiltonian model which treats the inter-strand and intra-strand forces at the level of the base pair. The elastic response of a set of homogeneous helices to externally applied forces…
The approach for the description of the DNA conformational transformations on the mesoscopic scales in the frame of the double helix is presented. Due to consideration of the joint motions of DNA structural elements along the conformational…
Dynamics of a single stranded DNA, which can form a hairpin have been studied in the constant force ensemble. Using Langevin dynamics simulations, we obtained the force-temperature diagram, which differs from the theoretical prediction…
We investigate the kinetics of the DNA melting transition using modified versions of the Peyrard-Dauxois-Bishop and Poland-Scheraga models that include long and short range interactions. Using Brownian dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations,…
The flexibility of short DNA chains is investigated via computation of the average correlation function between dimers which defines the persistence length. Path integration techniques have been applied to confine the phase space available…
DNA is now firmly established as a versatile and robust platform for achieving synthetic nanostructures. While the folding of single molecules into complex structures is routinely achieved through engineering basepair sequences, much less…
We study the static and dynamical properties of DNA in the vicinity of its melting transition, i.e. the separation of the two strands upon heating. The investigation is based on a simple mechanical model which includes the helicoidal…
The base pair fluctuations and helix untwisting are examined for a circular molecule. A realistic mesoscopic model including twisting degrees of freedom and bending of the molecular axis is proposed. The computational method, based on path…
A simple model of a circularly closed dsDNA in a poor solvent is considered as an example of a semi-flexible polymer with self-attraction. To find the ground states, the conformational energy is computed as a sum of the bending and…
We report studies of the equilibrium and the dynamics of a general set of lattice models which capture the essence of the force-induced or mechanical DNA unzipping transition. Besides yielding the whole equilibrium phase diagram in the…
To study the elastic properties of rod-like DNA nanostructures, we perform long simulations of these structure using the oxDNA coarse-grained model. By analysing the fluctuations in these trajectories we obtain estimates of the bend and…
We investigate irreversibility and dissipation in single molecules that cooperatively fold/unfold in a two state manner under the action of mechanical force. We apply path thermodynamics to derive analytical expressions for the average…
We studied how the inhomogeneity of a sequence affects the phase transition that takes place at DNA melting. Unlike previous works, which considered thermodynamic quantities averaged over many different inhomogeneous sequences, we focused…
Tethered particle experiments use light microscopy to measure the position of a micrometer-sized bead tethered to a microscope slide via a ~micrometer length polymer, in order to infer the behavior of the invisible polymer. Currently, this…
Many proteins interact with and deform double-stranded DNA in cells. Single-molecule experiments have studied the elasticity of DNA with helix-deforming proteins, including proteins that bend DNA. These experiments increase the need for…
We show that a mesoscale model, with a minimal number of parameters, can well describe the thermomechanical and mechanochemical behavior of homogeneous DNA at thermal equilibrium under tension and torque. We predict critical temperatures…
We study the elastic behaviour of a supercoiled DNA molecule. The simplest model is that of a rod like chain, involving two elastic constants, the bending and the twist rigidities. We show that this model is singular and needs a small…
The melting curves of short heterogeneous DNA chains in solution are calculated on the basis of statistical thermodynamics and compared to experiments. The computation of the partition function is based on the Peyrard-Bishop hamiltonian,…
The local opening of DNA is an intriguing phenomenon from a statistical physics point of view, but is also essential for its biological function. For instance, the transcription and replication of our genetic code can not take place without…
We develop a continuum elastic approach to examining the bending mechanics of semiflexible filaments with a local internal degree of freedom that couples to the bending modulus. We apply this model to study the nonlinear mechanics of a…