Related papers: Effects of kink and flexible hinge defects on mech…
It is shown that information transmission inside a cell can occur by means of mechanical waves transmitted through DNA. The propagation of the waves is strongly dependent on the shape of the DNA thus proteins that change the shape of DNA…
Double-stranded DNA `overstretches' at a pulling force of about 65 pN, increasing in length by a factor of 1.7. The nature of the overstretched state is unknown, despite its considerable importance for DNA's biological function and…
Single molecule experiments on single- and double stranded DNA have sparked a renewed interest in the force-extension of polymers. The extensible Freely Jointed Chain (FJC) model is frequently invoked to explain the observed behavior of…
By combining analytical theory and Molecular Dynamics simulations we study the relaxation dynamics of DNA circular plasmids that initially undergo a local twist perturbation. We identify three distinctive time scales; (I) a rapid relaxation…
The response of a semiflexible polyelectrolyte chain to stretching in the regimes of moderate and weak screening is studied theoretically, with a special focus on DNA experiments. By using the nonlinear Poisson--Boltzmann description of…
The ability of double-stranded DNA or RNA to locally melt and form kinks leads to strong non-linear elasticity effects that qualitatively affect their packing in confined spaces. Using analytical theory and numerical simulation we show that…
The strong bending of polymers is poorly understood. We propose a general quantitative framework of polymer bending that includes both the weak and strong bending regimes on the same footing, based on a single general physical principle. As…
We present a self-contained theory for the mechanical response of DNA in single molecule experiments. Our model is based on a 1D continuum description of the DNA molecule and accounts both for its elasticity and for DNA-DNA electrostatic…
A class of nucleosome remodeling motors translocate nucleosomes, to which they are attached, toward the middle of DNA chain in the presence of ATP during in vitro experiments. Such a biological activity is likely based on a physical…
The propensity of short DNA sequences to convert to the circular form is studied by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian method which incorporates both the bending of the molecule axis and the intrinsic twist of the DNA strands. The base pair…
In this work, we show that by varying the experimental conditions, the driving amplitude, a dynamic force microscope allows DNA properties to be selectively imaged. The substrate on which the DNA is fixed is a silica surface grafted with…
We present a theoretical study of single-stranded DNA under stretching. Within the proposed framework, the effects of basepairing on the mechanical response of the molecule can be studied in combination with an arbitrary underlying model of…
In this paper we consider the anharmonic corrections to the anisotropic elastic rod model for DNA. Our model accounts for the difference between the bending energies of positive and negative rolls, which comes from the asymmetric structure…
Understanding the melting of short DNA sequences probes DNA at the scale of the genetic code and raises questions which are very different from those posed by very long sequences, which have been extensively studied. We investigate this…
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…
Minuscule molecular forces can transform DNA into a structure that is elongated by more than half its original length. We demonstrate that this pronounced conformational transition is of relevance to ongoing experimental and theoretical…
We present a computational method to evaluate the end-to-end and the contour length distribution functions of short DNA molecules described by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian. The method generates a large statistical ensemble of possible…
Mechanical properties of nucleic acids play an important role in many biological processes which often involve physical deformations of these molecules. At sufficiently long length scales (say above $\sim 20-30$ base pairs) the mechanics of…
The influence of decoherence and bonding on the linear conductance of single double-stranded DNA molecules is examined by fitting a phenomenological statistical model developed recently (EPJB {\bf 68}, 237 (2009)) to experimental results.…
The influence of tension on DNA looping has been studied both experimentally and theoretically in the past. However, different theoretical models have yielded different predictions, leaving uncertainty about their validity. We briefly…