Related papers: Effects of kink and flexible hinge defects on mech…
The thermodynamic properties of DNA circular molecules are investigated by a new path integral computational method which treats in the real space the fundamental forces stabilizing the molecule. The base pair and stacking contributions to…
Unusually high bending flexibility has been recently reported for DNA on short length scales. We use atomic force microscopy (AFM) in solution to obtain a direct estimate of DNA bending statistics for scales down to one helical turn. It…
A model of self-avoiding walk with suitable constraints on self-attraction is developed to describe the conformational behaviour of a single stranded short DNA molecule that form hairpin structure. Using exact enumeration method we…
Three coarse-grained models of the double-stranded DNA are proposed and compared in the context of mechanical manipulation such as twisting and various schemes of stretching. The models differ in the number of effective beads (between two…
The macroscopic curvature induced in the double helical B-DNA by regularly repeated adenine tracts (A-tracts) is a long known, but still unexplained phenomenon. This effect plays a key role in DNA studies because it is unique in the amount…
The denaturation of double-stranded DNA as function of force and temperature is discussed. At room temperature, sequence heterogeneity dominates the physics of single molecule force-extension curves starting about 7 piconewtons of below a…
Controlled movement and manipulation of magnetic micro and nanostructures using magnetic forces can give rise to important applications in biomedecine, diagnostics and immunology. We report controlled magnetophoresis and stretching, in…
DNA strand displacement (SD) reactions are central to the operation of many synthetic nucleic acid systems, including molecular circuits, sensors, and machines. Over the years, a broad set of design frameworks has emerged to accommodate…
We present a study of the bend angle distribution of semiflexible polymers of short and intermediate lengths within the wormlike chain model. This enables us to calculate the elastic response of a stiff molecule to a bending moment. Our…
A three dimensional mesoscopic model is applied to study the properties of short DNA chains in a confining environment. The cylindrical channel is represented by a hard-wall repulsive potential incorporated in the system Hamiltonian. The…
The structure of DNA in the nucleosome core particle is studied using an elastic model that incorporates anisotropy in the bending energetics and twist-bend coupling. Using the experimentally determined structure of nucleosomal DNA [T.J.…
We introduce a coarse-grained rigid nucleotide model of DNA that reproduces the basic thermodynamics of short strands: duplex hybridization, single-stranded stacking and hairpin formation, and also captures the essential structural…
We present Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations of the stretching of a single 30 nm chromatin fiber. The model approximates the DNA by a flexible polymer chain with Debye-H\"uckel electrostatics and uses a two-angle zig-zag model for the geometry…
The extension of DNA confined to nanochannels has been studied intensively and in detail. Yet quantitative comparisons between experiments and model calculations are difficult because most theoretical predictions involve undetermined…
Nucleic acids have been regarded as stiff polymers with long-range flexibility and generally modeled using elastic rod models of polymer physics. Notwithstanding, investigations carried out over the past few years on single fragments of…
The denaturation of the double helix is a template for fundamental biological functions such as replication and transcription involving the formation of local fluctuational openings. The denaturation transition is studied for heterogeneous…
This paper introduces the use of cable dynamics models as a means to explore the mechanics of DNA on long-length scales. It is on these length scales that DNA forms twisted and curved three-dimensional shapes known as supercoils and loops.…
In this work we investigate the electronic transport along model DNA molecules using an effective tight-binding approach that includes the backbone on site energies. The localization length and participation number are examined as a…
We use an elastic rod model with contact to study the extension versus rotation diagrams of single supercoiled DNA molecules. We reproduce quantitatively the supercoiling response of overtwisted DNA and, using experimental data, we get an…
We report model calculations on DNA single strands which describe the equilibrium dynamics and kinetics of hairpin formation and melting. Modeling is at the level of single bases. Strand rigidity is described in terms of simple polymer…