Related papers: DNA hybridization kinetics: zippering, internal di…
Gel electrophoresis allows to separate knotted DNA (nicked circular) of equal length according to the knot type. At low electric fields, complex knots being more compact, drift faster than simpler knots. Recent experiments have shown that…
DNA unzipping by nanopore translocation has implications in diverse contexts, from polymer physics to single-molecule manipulation to DNA-enzyme interactions in biological systems. Here we use molecular dynamics simulations and a…
We propose a new statistical mechanics model for the melting transition of DNA. Base pairing and stacking are treated as separate degrees of freedom, and the interplay between pairing and stacking is described by a set of local rules which…
We study pairs of interacting self-avoiding walks on the 3d simple cubic lattice. They have a common origin and are allowed to overlap only at the same monomer position along the chain. The latter overlaps are indeed favored by an energetic…
Double stranded DNA chain is known to have nontrivial elasticity. We study the effect of this elasticity on the denaturation profile of DNA oligomer by constraining one base pair at one end of the oligomer to remain in unstretched (or…
A repair protein like RecG moves the stalled replication fork in the direction from the zipped to the unzipped state of DNA. It is proposed here that a softening of the zipped-unzipped interface at the fork results in the front propagating…
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…
We propose a new method for electrophoretic separation of DNA in which adsorbed polymers are driven over a disordered two-dimensional substrate which contains attractive sites for the polymers. Using simulations of a model for long polymer…
DNA based nanostructures built on a long single stranded DNA scaffold, known as DNA origamis, offer the possibility to organize various molecules at the nanometer scale in one pot experiments. The folding of the scaffold is guaranteed by…
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…
We studied the unzipping kinetics of single molecules of double-stranded DNA by pulling one of their two strands through a narrow protein pore. PCR analysis yielded the first direct proof of DNA unzipping in such a system. The time to unzip…
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…
Phase separation in biomolecular mixtures can result from multiple physical interactions, which may act either complementarily or antagonistically. In the case of protein-nucleic acid mixtures, charge plays a key role but can have…
An analysis of the stability of a duplex containing G.A mispairs or G.A/A.G tandem during DNA melting has revealed that duplex stability depends on both DNA sequences and on the conformations of the G.A mispairs. The thermodynamics of…
We study the electronic properties of DNA by way of a tight-binding model applied to four particular DNA sequences. The charge transfer properties are presented in terms of localisation lengths, crudely speaking the length over which…
The denaturation of the double helix is a template for fundamental biological functions such as replication and transcription involving the formation of local fluctuational openings. The denaturation transition is studied for heterogeneous…
Self-assembly is traditionally described as the process through which an initially disordered system relaxes towards an equilibrium ordered phase only driven by local interactions between its building blocks. However, This definition is too…
We study the electronic transport through short DNA chains with various sequences of base pairs between voltage-biased leads. The strong coupling of the charge carriers to local vibrations of the base pairs leads to the formation of…
The competition between toroidal and rod-like conformations as possible ground states for DNA condensation is studied as a function of the stiffness, the length of the DNA and the form of the long-range interactions between neighboring…
We propose a new strategy to improve the self-assembly properties of DNA-functionalised colloids. The problem that we address is that DNA-functionalised colloids typically crystallize in a narrow temperature window, if at all. The…