Related papers: DNA-Protein Binding Rates: Bending Fluctuation and…
Strong experimental and theoretical evidence shows that transcription factors and other specific DNA-binding proteins find their sites using a two-mode search: alternating between 3D diffusion through the cell and 1D sliding along the DNA.…
Experiments indicate that unbinding rates of proteins from DNA can depend on the concentration of proteins in nearby solution. Here we present a theory of multi-step replacement of DNA-bound proteins by solution-phase proteins. For four…
The proton-magnetic reaction is commonly used in MRI machines with a strong magnetic field of over 1 T, while this study hypothesized that the electron magnetic reaction of hydrogen could affect the hydrogen bonds of double-stranded DNA…
Heterogeneity in biological molecules, resulting in molecule-to-molecule variations in their dynamics and function, is an emerging theme. To elucidate the consequences of heterogeneous behavior at the single molecule level, we propose an…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of a torsionally constrained polymer. The polymer is modeled as a fluctuating rod with bend stiffness A kT and twist stiffness C kT. In such a model, thermal bend fluctuations couple geometrically to…
For short DNA molecules in crowded environments, we evaluate macroscopic parameters such as the average end-to-end distance and the twist conformation by tuning the strength of the site specific confinement driven by the crowders. The…
Although DNA is often bent in vivo, it is unclear how DNA-bending forces modulate DNA-protein binding affinity. Here, we report how a range of DNA-bending forces modulates the binding of the Integration Host Factor (IHF) protein to various…
By assuming that not only counter-ions but DNA molecules as well are thermally distributed according to a Boltzmann law, we propose a modified Poisson-Boltzmann equation at the classical level as starting point to compute the effects of…
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…
First shells of hydration and bulk solvent plays a crucial role in the folding of proteins. Here, the role of water in the dynamics of proteins has been investigated using a theoretical protein-solvent model and a statistical physics…
The modification of dominant coherent structures that extend through the log-region of a drag reduced turbulent boundary layer is studied via examination of two-point correlations from time-resolved particle-image-velocimetry. Measurements…
DNA capture with high fidelity is an essential part of nanopore translocation. We report several important aspects of the capture process and subsequent translocation of a model DNA polymer through a solid-state nanopore in presence of an…
The binding of proteins onto DNA contributes to the shaping and packaging of genome as well as to the expression of specific genetic messages. With a view to understanding the interplay between the presence of proteins and the deformation…
Polymer composites are ideal candidates for next generation biomimetic soft materials because of their exquisite bottom-up designability. However, the richness of behaviours comes at a price: the need for precise and extensive…
The phase diagram of a water solution of DNA and oppositely charged spherical macroions is studied. DNA winds around spheres to form beads-on-a-string complexes resembling the chromatin 10 nm fiber. At small enough concentration of spheres…
Physical mechanisms underlying the empirical correlation between relative contact order (CO) and folding rate among naturally-occurring small single-domain proteins are investigated by evaluating postulated interaction schemes for a set of…
A DNA-protein complex modelled by a semiflexible chain and an attractive spherical core is studied in the situation when an external stretching force is acting on one end monomer of the chain while the other end monomer is kept fixed in…
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…
We study the spontaneous nucleation and crystallization of linear and cyclic chains of flexibly connected hard spheres using extensive molecular dynamics simulations. To this end, we present a novel event-driven molecular dynamics…
A simple model of a circularly closed dsDNA in a poor solvent is considered as an example of a semi-flexible polymer with self-attraction. To find the ground states, the conformational energy is computed as a sum of the bending and…