Related papers: Long DNA molecule as a pseudoscalar liquid crystal
Found in all eukaryotic cells, linker histones H1 are known to bind to and rearrange nucleosomal linker DNA. In vitro, the fundamental nature of H1/DNA interactions has attracted wide interest among research communities - for biologists…
Viscoelastic phase separation of colloidal suspensions can be interrupted to form gels either by glass transition or by crystallization. With a new confocal microscopy protocol, we follow the entire kinetics of phase separation, from…
In the type-I two-Higgs-doublet model, the pseudoscalar $A$ can act as a long-lived particle (LLP) for sufficiently large values of $\tan\beta$. At the LHC, the $A$ particles are predominantly produced in pairs through $pp \to W^*/Z^* \to…
Nearly thirty years after its inception, the field of DNA-programmed colloidal self-assembly has begun to realize its initial promise. In this review, we summarize recent developments in designing effective interactions and understanding…
We present a coarse-grained model of DNA-functionalized colloids that is computationally tractable. Importantly, the model parameters are solely based on experimental data. Using this highly simplified model, we can predict the phase…
While slowly turning the ends of a single molecule of DNA at constant applied force, a discontinuity was recently observed at the supercoiling transition, when a small plectoneme is suddenly formed. This can be understood as an abrupt…
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…
A construction method for duplex cage structures with icosahedral sym- metry made out of single-stranded DNA molecules is presented and applied to an icosidodecahedral cage. It is shown via a mixture of analytic and computer techniques that…
We present a generic model for DNA at the base-pair level. We use a variant of the Gay-Berne potential to represent the stacking energy between neighboring base-pairs. The sugar-phosphate backbones are taken into account by semi-rigid…
B-DNA solutions of suitable concentration form left-handed chiral nematic phases (cholesterics). Such phases have also been observed in solutions of other stiff or semiflexible chiral polymers; magnitude and handedness of the cholesteric…
The mechanical properties of DNA play a critical role in many biological functions. For example, DNA packing in viruses involves confining the viral genome in a volume (the viral capsid) with dimensions that are comparable to the DNA…
It is demonstrated by analyzing real examples that phase transitions in layered crystals occur like all other solid-state phase transitions by nucleation and crystal growth, but have a specific morphology. There the nucleation is epitaxial,…
When the DNA double helix is subjected to external forces it can stretch elastically to elongations reaching 100% of its natural length. These distortions, imposed at the mesoscopic or macroscopic scales, have a dramatic effect on…
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…
Motivated by recent experiments we have studied the optical conductivity of DNA in its natural environment containing water molecules and counter ions. Our density functional theory calculations (using SIESTA) for four base pair B-DNA with…
The yearly global production of data is growing exponentially, outpacing the capacity of existing storage media, such as tape and disk, and surpassing our ability to store it. DNA storage - the representation of arbitrary information as…
Enzymatic ligation is essential for the synthesis of long DNA. However, the number of ligated products exponentially decays as the DNA synthesis proceeds in a random manner. The controlling of ligation randomness is of importance to…
We use a lattice model of a ternary mixture containing saturated and unsaturated lipids with cholesterol (Chol), to study the structural properties characterizing the coexistence between the liquid-disordered and liquid-ordered phases.…
RNA forms elaborate secondary structures through intramolecular base pairing. These structures perform critical biological functions within each cell. Due to the availability of a polynomial algorithm to calculate the partition function…
We show how single-molecule unzipping experiments can provide strong evidence that the zero-force melting transition of long molecules of natural dsDNA should be classified as a phase transition of the higher-order type (continuous). We…