Related papers: An Asymmetric Elastic Rod Model for DNA
The theory of elastic rods can be used to describe certain geometric and topological properties of the DNA molecules. A similar effective field theory approach was previously suggested to describe the conformations and dynamics of proteins.…
DNA is a flexible molecule, but the degree of its flexibility is subject to debate. The commonly-accepted persistence length of $l_p \approx 500\,$\AA\ is inconsistent with recent studies on short-chain DNA that show much greater…
Within a simple elastic theory, we study the elongation versus force characteristics of a supercoiled DNA molecule at thermal equilibrium in the regime of small supercoiling. The partition function is mapped to the path integral…
We here examine the nonlinear dynamics of artificial homogeneous DNA chain relying on the plain-base rotator model. It is shown that such dynamics can exhibit kink and antikink solitons of sine-Gordon type. In that respect we propose…
We study the effects of the sequence on the propagation of nonlinear excitations in simple models of DNA in which we incorporate actual DNA sequences obtained from human genome data. We show that kink propagation requires forces over a…
In this paper we consider a physical system in which two DNA molecules braid about each other. The distance between the two molecular ends, on either side of the braid, is held at a distance much larger than supercoiling radius of the…
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…
We examine the conformations of a model for under- and overwound DNA. The molecule is represented as a cylindrically symmetric elastic string subjected to a stretching force and to constraints corresponding to a specification of the link…
It is well known that the structural deformations (stressed states) of DNA molecule play a crucial role in its biological functions including gene expression. For instance, looping in DNA (often mediated by protein binding) is a crucial…
Despite the significance of the high flexibility exhibited by short DNAs, there remains an incomplete understanding of their anomalous persistence length. In this study, we propose a novel approach wherein each fundamental characteristic of…
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…
We study the nonlinear dynamics of a completely inhomogeneous DNA chain which is governed by a perturbed sine-Gordon equation. A multiple scale perturbation analysis provides perturbed kink-antikink solitons to represent open state…
Allosteric interactions in DNA are crucial for various biological processes. These interactions are quantified by measuring the change in free energy as a function of the distance between the binding sites for two ligands. Here we show that…
This paper aims at a comprehensive understanding on the novel elastic property of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) discovered very recently through single-molecule manipulation techniques. A general elastic model for double-stranded biopolymers…
We study the electric properties of single-stranded DNA molecules with hairpin-like shapes in the presence of a magnetic flux. It is shown that the current amplitude can be modulated by the applied field. The details of the electric…
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…
A unified model is constructed to study the recently observed DNA entropic elasticity, cooperative extensibility, and supercoiling property. With the introduction of a new structural parameter (the folding angle $\phi$), bending…
The approach for the description of the DNA conformational transformations on the mesoscopic scales in the frame of the double helix is presented. Due to consideration of the joint motions of DNA structural elements along the conformational…
Biological filaments such as DNA or bacterial flagella are typically curved in their natural states. To elucidate the interplay of viscous drag, twisting, and bending in the overdamped dynamics of such filaments, we compute the steady-state…
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…