Related papers: A thermodynamic model for agglomeration of DNA-loo…
The competition between toroidal and rod-like conformations as possible ground states for DNA condensation is studied as a function of the stiffness, the length of the DNA and the form of the long-range interactions between neighboring…
We calculate the probability of DNA loop formation mediated by regulatory proteins such as Lac repressor (LacI), using a mathematical model of DNA elasticity. Our model is adapted to calculating quantities directly observable in Tethered…
We simulate the assembly of DNA copolymers from two types of short duplexes (short double strands with a single-stranded overhang at each end), as described by the oxDNA model. We find that the statistics of chain lengths can be well…
Proteins fold to a specific functional conformation with a densely packed hydrophobic core that controls their stability. We develop a geometric, yet all-atom model for proteins that explains the universal core packing fraction of…
The dynamics of molecular collisions in a macroscopic body are encoded by the parameter Thermodynamic entropy - a statistical measure of the number of molecular configurations that correspond to a given macrostate. Directionality in the…
Organization and maintenance of the chromosomal DNA in living cells strongly depends on the DNA interactions with a plethora of DNA-binding proteins. Single-molecule studies show that formation of nucleoprotein complexes on DNA by such…
We investigate the measurement of DNA supercoiling density ($\sigma$) along chromosomes using interaction frequencies between DNA and DNA-anchored clusters of proteins. Specifically, we show how the physics of DNA supercoiling leads, in…
The laws of thermodynamics apply to biophysical systems on the nanoscale as described by the framework of stochastic thermodynamics. This theory provides universal, exact relations for quantities like work, which have been verified in…
Several important biological processes are initiated by the binding of a protein to a specific site on the DNA. The strategy adopted by a protein, called transcription factor (TF), for searching its specific binding site on the DNA has been…
The statistical physics of homogeneous DNA is investigated by the imaginary time path integral formalism. The base pair stretchings are described by an ensemble of paths selected through a macroscopic constraint, the fulfillement of the…
Recognition and binding of specific sites on DNA by proteins is central for many cellular functions such as transcription, replication, and recombination. In the process of recognition, a protein rapidly searches for its specific site on a…
We study the impact of DNA coiling on the search rate of proteins moving along the DNA contour interspersed by three-dimensional (3D) bulk excursions. When the DNA is coiled proteins performing short 3D hops along a DNA segment can be…
We consider discrete and continuous representations of a thermodynamic process in which a random walker (e.g. a molecular motor on a molecular track) uses a periodically pumped energy (work) to pass $N$ sites and move energetically downhill…
Specific binding of proteins to DNA is one of the most common ways in which gene expression is controlled. Although general rules for the DNA-protein recognition can be derived, the ambiguous and complex nature of this mechanism precludes a…
Increasing evidence suggests that chromosome folding and genetic expression are intimately connected. For example, the co-expression of a large number of genes can benefit from their spatial co-localization in the cellular space.…
A DNA-protein complex modelled by a semiflexible chain and an attractive spherical core is studied in the situation when an external stretching force is acting on one end monomer of the chain while the other end monomer is kept fixed in…
The speed of site-specific binding of transcription factor (TFs) proteins with genomic DNA seems to be strongly retarded by the randomly occurring sequence traps. Traps are those DNA sequences sharing significant similarity with the…
To ensure fast gene activation, Transcription Factors (TF) use a mechanism known as facilitated diffusion to find their DNA promoter site. Here we analyze such a process where a TF alternates between 3D and 1D diffusion. In the latter (TF…
Genome-wide patterns of genetic divergence reveal mechanisms of adaptation under gene flow. Empirical data show that divergence is mostly concentrated in narrow genomic regions. This pattern may arise because differentiated loci protect…
Motivated by empirical observations of algebraic duplicated sequence length distributions in a broad range of natural genomes, we analytically formulate and solve a class of simple discrete duplication/substitution models that generate…