Related papers: Mechanical conversion of low-affinity Integration …
Molecular combing is a powerful and simple method for aligning DNA molecules onto a surface. Using this technique combined with fluorescence microscopy, we observed that the length of lambda-DNA molecules was extended to about 1.6 times…
The dependence of DNA assemblies conductance on relative humidity is investigated theoretically. Following earlier suggestions, we consider the ionic conductivity through the layers of water adsorbed by DNA molecules. The increase in…
DNA looping is important in DNA condensation and regulation. One method for forming a DNA loop, thought to be used by the condensing agent protamine, is bind-and-bend. In bind-and-bend, molecules bind all along the DNA, each creating a bend…
The sequence-dependent structural variability and conformational dynamics of DNA play pivotal roles in many biological milieus, such as in the site-specific binding of transcription factors to target regulatory elements. To better…
Transcription regulation is largely governed by the profile and the dynamics of transcription factors' binding to DNA. Stochastic effects are intrinsic to this dynamics and the binding to functional sites must be controled with a certain…
As the chief informational molecule of life, DNA is subject to extensive physical manipulations. The energy required to deform double-helical DNA depends on sequence, and this mechanical code of DNA influences gene regulation, such as…
The equilibrium three dimensional shape of relatively short loops of DNA is studied using an elastic model that takes into account anisotropy in bending rigidities. Using a reasonable estimate for the anisotropy, it is found that cyclized…
The Histone-like Nucleoid Structuring protein (H-NS) is a nucleoid-associated protein, which is involved in both gene regulation and DNA compaction. H-NS can bind to DNA in two different ways: in trans, by binding to two separate DNA…
This paper devotes to formulating several multiscale models to study the effect of pH-dependent ionic inhomogeneity on the electrical potential distributions and the graded elastic properties of a nanoscale DNA film and the related bending…
Recent work indicates that twist-bend coupling plays an important role in DNA micromechanics. Here we investigate its effect on bent DNA. We provide an analytical solution of the minimum-energy shape of circular DNA, showing that twist-bend…
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…
The chromosomal DNA of bacteria is folded into a compact body called the nucleoid, which is composed essentially of DNA (80%), RNA (10%), and a number of different proteins (10%). These nucleoid proteins act as regulators of gene expression…
The effect of secondary structure on DNA duplex formation is poorly understood. We use a coarse-grained model of DNA to show that specific 3- and 4-base pair hairpins reduce hybridization rates by factors of 2 and 10 respectively, in good…
DNA deformations play crucial roles in many biological processes and material applications. During DNA deformation, DNA structural parameters often exhibit non-trivial and counterintuitive couplings, such as the twist-stretch and…
There is now a certain consensus that Transcription Factors (TFs) reach their target sites, where they regulate gene transcription, via a mechanism dubbed facilitated diffusion (FD). In FD, the TF cycles between events of 3D-diffusion in…
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…
Frameshift mutations in protein-coding DNA sequences produce a drastic change in the resulting protein sequence, which prevents classic protein alignment methods from revealing the proteins' common origin. Moreover, when a large number of…
We study numerically the mechanical stability and elasticity properties of duplex DNA molecules within the frame of a network model incorporating microscopic degrees of freedom related with the arrangement of the base pairs. We pay special…
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…
Bending of DNA from a straight rod to a circular form in presence of any of the mono-, di-, tri- or tetravalent counterions has been simulated in strong Coulomb coupling environment employing a previously developed energy minimization…