Related papers: Stretching of a single-stranded DNA: Evidence for …
Debates about conductivity of DNAs have been recently renewed due to contradictory results of direct measurements by use of electrical contacts to molecules. In several works it was discovered that double-stranded (ds)DNAs are conductors:…
Metropolis Monte Carlo simulation is used to investigate the elasticity of torsionally stressed double-stranded DNA, in which twist and supercoiling are incorporated as a natural result of base-stacking interaction and backbone bending…
Recent ultrafast experiments have implicated intrachain base-stacking rather than base-pairing as the crucial factor in determining the fate and transport of photoexcited species in DNA chains. An important issue that has emerged concerns…
By resorting to the thick-chain model we discuss how the stretching response of a polymer is influenced by the self-avoidance entailed by its finite thickness. The characterization of the force versus extension curve for a thick chain is…
The symmetries of the DNA double helix require a new term in its linear response to stress: the coupling between twist and stretch. Recent experiments with torsionally-constrained single molecules give the first direct measurement of this…
The quite recent technological rise in molecular biology allowed single molecule manipulation experiments, where molecule stretching plays a primary role. In order to understand the experimental data, it is felt the urge of some physical…
Loops are essential secondary structure elements in folded DNA and RNA molecules and proliferate close to the melting transition. Using a theory for nucleic acid secondary structures that accounts for the logarithmic entropy c ln m for a…
We introduce a sequence-dependent parametrization for a coarse-grained DNA model [T. E. Ouldridge, A. A. Louis, and J. P. K. Doye, J. Chem. Phys. 134, 085101 (2011)] originally designed to reproduce the properties of DNA molecules with…
DNA strand displacement, where a single-stranded nucleic acid invades a DNA duplex, is pervasive in genomic processes and DNA engineering applications. The kinetics of strand displacement have been studied in bulk; however, the kinetics of…
The flexibility of short DNA fragments is studied by a Hamiltonian model which treats the inter-strand and intra-strand forces at the level of the base pair. The elastic response of a set of homogeneous helices to externally applied forces…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
In mechanical manipulation experiments, a single DNA molecule overwound at constant force undergoes a discontinuous drop in extension as it buckles and forms a superhelical loop (a plectoneme). Further overwinding the DNA, we observe an…
Molecule-electrode contact atomic structures are a critical factor that characterizes molecular devices, but their precise understanding and control still remain elusive. Based on combined first-principles calculations and single-molecule…
We use a recently developed coarse-grained model to simulate the overstretching of duplex DNA. Overstretching at 23C occurs at 74 pN in the model, about 6-7 pN higher than the experimental value at equivalent salt conditions. Furthermore,…
Single molecule force spectroscopy reveals unfolding of domains in titin upon stretching. We provide a theoretical framework for these experiments by computing the phase diagrams for force-induced unfolding of single domain proteins using…
Single molecule force spectroscopy methods can be used to generate folding trajectories of biopolymers from arbitrary regions of the folding landscape. We illustrate the complexity of the folding kinetics and generic aspects of the collapse…
The dynamics of flexible polymers in dilute solution is usually described in terms of the pure Rouse or Zimm bead-spring models assuming continuous distribution of the internal relaxation modes. We show that this approach may lead to…
We study the unexpected high flexibility of short dsDNA which recently has been reported by a number of experiments. Via the Langevin dynamics simulation of our Breathing DNA model, first we observe the formation of bubbles within the…
Most single-molecule studies derive the kinetic rates of native, intermediate, and unfolded states from equilibrium hopping experiments. Here, we apply Kramers kinetic diffusive model to derive the force-dependent kinetic rates of…
The flexibility and stiffness of small DNA play a fundamental role ranging from several biophysical processes to nano-technological applications. Here, we estimate the mechanical properties of short double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) having length…