Related papers: The size of the nucleosome
We use a coarse-grained model of DNA-functionalized particles to understand the role of DNA chain length on their self-assembly. We find that the increasing chain length for a given particle size decreases the propensity to form ordered…
A class of nucleosome remodeling motors translocate nucleosomes, to which they are attached, toward the middle of DNA chain in the presence of ATP during in vitro experiments. Such a biological activity is likely based on a physical…
Storing data in DNA is being explored as an efficient solution for archiving and in-object storage. Synthesis time and cost remain challenging, significantly limiting some applications at this stage. In this paper we investigate efficient…
Proteins are biological polymers that underlie all cellular functions. The first high-resolution protein structures were determined by x-ray crystallography in the 1960s. Since then, there has been continued interest in understanding and…
This paper aims at a comprehensive understanding on the novel elastic property of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) discovered very recently through single-molecule manipulation techniques. A general elastic model for double-stranded biopolymers…
Focusing on the DNA-bridging nucleoid proteins Fis and H-NS, and integrating several independent experimental and bioinformatic data sources, we investigate the links between chromosomal spatial organization and global transcriptional…
The probability of two loci, separated by a certain genome length, being in contact can be inferred using the Chromosome Conformation Capture (3C) method and related Hi-C experiments. How to go from the contact map, a matrix listing the…
The distances over which biological molecules and their complexes can function range from a few nanometres, in the case of folded structures, to millimetres, for example during chromosome organization. Describing phenomena that cover such…
In this paper we consider a physical system in which two DNA molecules braid about each other. The distance between the two molecular ends, on either side of the braid, is held at a distance much larger than supercoiling radius of the…
Solid-state nanopore DNA sequencers present mechanical and chemical stability, reusability, and large-scale integrability. However, their development is hindered by the absence of a protein-free mechanism for controlling DNA translocation,…
This paper studies two problems that are motivated by the novel recent approach of composite DNA that takes advantage of the DNA synthesis property which generates a huge number of copies for every synthesized strand. Under this paradigm,…
Proteins are linear chain molecules that play a central role in life and health. Protein native state folds are modular assemblies of space-filling building blocks of {\alpha}-helices, \{beta}-sheets and tight turns. Here we deduce the…
Bacterial genomes have been shown to be partitioned into several kilobases long chromosomal domains that are topologically independent from each other, meaning that change of DNA superhelicity in one domain does not propagate to neighbors.…
The dynamics of polymer translocation through a pore has been the subject of recent theoretical and experimental works. We have considered theoretical estimates and performed computer simulations to understand the mechanism of DNA uptake…
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…
An approach for approximately calculating the number of genes in a genome is presented, which takes into account the average protein length expected for the species. A number of virus, bacterial and eukaryotic genomes are scrutinized.…
A multiscale approach is used to simulate the translocation of DNA through a nanopore. Within this scheme, the interactions of the molecule with the surrounding fluid (solvent) are explicitly taken into account. By generating polymers of…
The ubiquitous biomacromolecule DNA has an axial rigidity persistence length of ~50 nm, driven by its elegant double helical structure. While double and multiple helix structures appear widely in nature, only rarely are these found in…
The chiral nature of DNA plays a crucial role in cellular processes. Here we use magnetic tweezers to explore one of the signatures of this chirality, the coupling between stretch and twist deformations. We show that the extension of a…
The simplest possible informational heteropolymer requires only a two-letter alphabet to be able to store information. The evolutionary choice of four monomers in the informational biomolecules RNA/DNA or their progenitors is intriguing,…