Related papers: Shear Unzipping of DNA
The temperature dependence of DNA flexibility is studied in the presence of stretching and unzipping forces. Two classes of models are considered. In one case the origin of elasticity is entropic due to the polymeric correlations, and in…
When DNA molecules are heated they denature. This occurs locally so that loops of molten single DNA strands form, connected by intact double-stranded DNA pieces. The properties of this "melting" transition have been intensively…
We study the mechanics of a reversible decohesion (unzipping) of an elastic layer subjected to quasi-static end-point loading. At the micro level the system is simulated by an elastic chain of particles interacting with a rigid foundation…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study the hysteresis in unzipping of a double stranded block copolymer DNA with $-A_n B_n-$ repeat units. Here $A$ and $B$ represent two different types of base pairs having two- and three-bonds,…
DNA bending is biologically important for genome regulation and is relevant to a range of nanotechnological systems. Recent results suggest that sharp bending is much easier than implied by the widely-used worm-like chain model; many of…
While the thermodynamics of DNA hybridization is well understood, much less is known about the kinetics of this classic system. Filling this gap in our understanding has new urgency because DNA nanotechnology often depends critically on…
The electrical properties of DNA molecules are investigated by charge injection and electric force microscopy experiments. Prior to injection, DNA molecules exhibit a weak positively charged state. We probe the electrical behaviour of DNA…
The flexibility and the extension along the direction of the force are shown to be related to the bubble number fluctuation and the average number of bubbles respectively, when the strands of the DNA are subjected to a force along the same…
The nature and the universal properties of DNA thermal denaturation are investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. For suitable lattice models we determine the exponent c describing the decay of the probability distribution of denaturated…
Replication and transcription are two important processes in living systems. To execute such processes, various proteins work far away from equilibrium in a staggered way. Motivated by this, aspects of hysteresis during unzipping of DNA…
We investigate the denaturation dynamics of nucleic acids through extensive molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained RNA hairpin model. In apparent contradiction with Arrhenius' law, our findings reveal that the denaturation time…
The computational modelling of DNA is becoming crucial in light of new advances in DNA nanotechnology, single-molecule experiments and in vivo DNA tampering. Here we present a mesoscopic model for double stranded DNA (dsDNA) at the single…
We study the folding of RNA secondary structures with quenched sequence randomness by means of the constrained annealing method. A thermodynamic phase transition is induced by including the conformational weight of loop structures. In…
While the behavior of double stranded DNA at mesoscopic scales is fairly well understood, less is known about its relation to the rich mechanical properties in the base-pair scale, which is crucial, for instance, to understand DNA-protein…
Here we report on the use of double-nanohole (DNH) optical tweezers as a label-free and free-solution single-molecule probe for protein-DNA interactions. Using this approach, we demonstrate the unzipping of individual 10 base pair…
We considered a dsDNA polymer in which distribution of bases are random at the base pair level but ordered at a length of 18 base pairs and calculated its force elongation behaviour in the constant extension ensemble. The unzipping force…
The Poland-Scheraga (PS) model for the helix-coil transition of DNA considers the statistical mechanics of the thermally induced binding of two complementary strands of DNA. In this paper, we show how to modify the PS model when a torque is…
Coarse-grained models have played an important role in the study of the behavior of DNA at length scales beyond a few hundred base pairs. Traditionally, these models have relied on structurally featureless and sequence-independent…
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…
We examine the crystallization dynamics of nanoparticles reversibly tethered by DNA hybridization. We show that the crystallization happens readily only in a narrow temperature "slot," and always proceeds via a two-step process, mediated by…