Related papers: A Generalized Theory of DNA Looping and Cyclizatio…
A theoretical framework for evaluating the approximate energy and dynamic properties associated with the folding of DNA into nucleosomes and chromatin is presented. For this purpose experimentally determined elastic constants of linear DNA…
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 two strands of a DNA molecule with a repetitive sequence can pair into many different basepairing patterns. For perfectly periodic sequences, early bulk experiments of Poerschke indicate the existence of a sliding process, permitting…
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…
We study the elastic behaviour of a supercoiled DNA molecule. The simplest model is that of a rod like chain, involving two elastic constants, the bending and the twist rigidities. We show that this model is singular and needs a small…
Current models for the folding of the human genome see a hierarchy stretching down from chromosome territories, through A/B compartments and TADs (topologically-associating domains), to contact domains stabilized by cohesin and CTCF.…
The denaturation transition of circular DNA is studied within a Poland-Scheraga type approach, generalized to account for the fact that the total linking number (LK), which measures the number of windings of one strand around the other, is…
Active (catalysed) and passive (intrinsic) nucleosome repositioning is known to be a crucial event during the transcriptional activation of certain eucaryotic genes. Here we consider theoretically the intrinsic mechanism and study in detail…
A three dimensional mesoscopic model is applied to study the properties of short DNA chains in a confining environment. The cylindrical channel is represented by a hard-wall repulsive potential incorporated in the system Hamiltonian. The…
Modeling of DNA-protein interactions is a complex process involving many important time and length scales. This can be facilitated through the use of coarse-grained models which reduce the number of degrees of freedom and allow efficient…
In biological cells, DNA replication is carried out by the replisome, a protein complex encompassing multiple DNA polymerases. DNA replication is semi-discontinuous: a DNA polymerase synthesizes one (leading) strand of the DNA continuously,…
Quantum effects are mainly used for the determination of molecular shapes in molecular biology, but quantum information theory may be a more useful tool to understand the physics of life. Organic molecules and quantum circuits/protocols can…
Many structures inside the cell such as nucleosomes and protein-mediated DNA loops contain sharply bent double-stranded (ds) DNA. Therefore, the energetics of strong dsDNA bending constitutes an essential part of cellular thermodynamics.…
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…
The modelling of DNA mechanics under external constraints is discussed. Two analytical models are widely known, but disagree for instance on the value of the torsional modulus. The origin of this embarassing situation is located in the…
In this work we propose a model for DNA double helix within the tight-binding framework that incorporates the helicity of the molecules. We have studied localization properties of three DNAsequences,the periodic poly(dG)-poly(dC) and…
In the past years, the folding kinetics of many small single-domain proteins has been characterized by mutational Phi-value analysis. In this article, a simple, essentially parameter-free model is introduced which derives folding routes…
We examine the elastic model of short circular DNA. We obtain analytic expressions for configurations, elastic energy, twist and linking number of our solutions. We find the onset of the plectonemic transition. We suggest ways to use our…
We study DNA self-assembly and DNA computation using a coarse-grained DNA model within the directional dynamic bonding framework {[}C. Svaneborg, Comp. Phys. Comm. 183, 1793 (2012){]}. In our model, a single nucleotide or domain is…
Loops undergoing thermal fluctuations are prevalent in nature. Ring-like or cross-linked polymers, cyclic macromolecules, and protein-mediated DNA loops all belong to this category. Stability of these molecules are generally described in…