Related papers: Twist/Writhe Partitioning in a Coarse-Grained DNA …
Motivated by experiments in which single DNA molecules are stretched and twisted we consider a perturbative approach around very high forces, where we determine the writhe distribution in a simple, analytically tractable model. Our results…
We introduce a coarse-grained model of DNA with bases modeled as rigid-body ellipsoids to capture their anisotropic stereochemistry. Interaction potentials are all physicochemical and generated from all-atom simulation/parameterization with…
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…
Coarse-grained models have played an important role in the study of the behavior of DNA at length scales beyond a few hundred base pairs. Traditionally, these models have relied on structurally featureless and sequence-independent…
DNA is increasingly employed for bio and nanotechnology thanks to its exquisite versatility and designability. Most of its use is limited to linearised and torsionally relaxed DNA but non-trivial architectures and torsionally constrained --…
DNA supercoils are generated in genome regulation processes such as transcription and replication, and provide mechanical feedback to such processes. Under tension, DNA supercoil can present a coexistence state of plectonemic (P) and…
This work addresses the question of the interplay of DNA demixing and supercoiling in bacterial cells. Demixing of DNA from other globular macromolecules results from the overall repulsion between all components of the system and leads to…
This paper introduces the use of cable dynamics models as a means to explore the mechanics of DNA on long-length scales. It is on these length scales that DNA forms twisted and curved three-dimensional shapes known as supercoils and loops.…
We construct a theoretical model for the dynamics of a microscale colloidal particle, modeled as an interval, moving horizontally on a DNA-coated surface, modelled as a line coated with springs that can stick to the interval. Averaging over…
To study the elastic properties of rod-like DNA nanostructures, we perform long simulations of these structure using the oxDNA coarse-grained model. By analysing the fluctuations in these trajectories we obtain estimates of the bend and…
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…
We propose a stochastic model for gene transcription coupled to DNA supercoiling, where we incorporate the experimental observation that polymerases create supercoiling as they unwind the DNA helix, and that these enzymes bind more…
Genetic information is stored in a linear sequence of base-pairs; however, thermal fluctuations and complex DNA conformations such as folds and loops make it challenging to order genomic material for in vitro analysis. In this work, we…
The folding of RNA and DNA strands plays crucial roles in biological systems and bionanotechnology. However, studying these processes with high-resolution numerical models is beyond current computational capabilities due to the timescales…
The emerging field of hybrid DNA - protein nanotechnology brings with it the potential for many novel materials which combine the addressability of DNA nanotechnology with versatility of protein interactions. However, the design and…
Twisting DNA under a constant applied force reveals a thermally activated transition into a state with a supercoiled structure known as a plectoneme. Using transition state theory, we predict the rate of this plectoneme nucleation to be of…
We investigate the melting transition of non-supercoiled circular DNA of different lengths, employing Brownian dynamics simulation. In the absence of supercoiling, we find that melting of circular DNA is driven by a large bubble, which…
DNA bending is biologically important for genome regulation and is relevant to a range of nanotechnological systems. Recent results suggest that sharp bending is much easier than implied by the widely-used worm-like chain model; many of…
We present a quantitative, multi-scale coarse-grained model of DNA coated colloids. The parameters of this model are transferable and are solely based on experimental data. As a test case, we focus on nano-sized colloids carrying…
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…