Related papers: Localization phenomena in a DNA double helix struc…
Motivated by the wide ranging experimental results on the conductivity of DNA, we have investigated extraordinary configurations and chemical environments in which DNA might become a true molecular wire, perticularly from enhanced…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
The mechanical properties of molecules are today captured by single molecule manipulation experiments, so that polymer features are tested at a nanometric scale. Yet devising mathematical models to get further insight beyond the commonly…
We present Brownian dynamics simulations of the facilitated diffusion of a protein, modelled as a sphere with a binding site on its surface, along DNA, modelled as a semi-flexible polymer. We consider both the effect of DNA organisation in…
Recent experiments indicated that disorder effect in DNA may lead to a transition of the charge transport mechanism from band resonant tunnelling to thermal activated hopping. In this letter, based on Mott's variable-range hopping theory we…
Because of the double-helical structure of DNA, in which two strands of complementary nucleotides intertwine around each other, a covalently closed DNA molecule with no interruptions in either strand can be viewed as two interlocked…
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…
We study an intermediate quantum coherent-incoherent charge transport mechanism in metal-molecule-metal junctions using B\"uttiker's probe technique. This tool allows us to include incoherent effects in a controlled manner, and thus to…
We propose a phase coexistence based mechanism for activity of helicases, ubiquitous enzymes that unwind double stranded DNA. The helicase-DNA complex constitutes a fixed-stretch ensemble that entails a coexistence of domains of zipped and…
Charge inversion of a DNA double helix by an oppositely charged flexible polyelectrolyte (PE) is considered. We assume that, in the neutral state of the DNA-PE complex, each of the DNA charges is locally compensated by a PE charge. When an…
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…
We present an elastic model of B-form DNA as a stack of thin, rigid plates or base pairs that are not permitted to deform. The symmetry of DNA and the constraint of plate rigidity limit the number of bulk elastic constants contributing to a…
The double-helical structure of DNA results from canonical base pairing and stacking interactions. However, variations from steady-state conformations result from mechanical perturbations in cells. These different topologies have…
We use an elastic rod model with contact to study the extension versus rotation diagrams of single supercoiled DNA molecules. We reproduce quantitatively the supercoiling response of overtwisted DNA and, using experimental data, we get an…
We propose a model Hamiltonian for describing charge transport through short homogeneous double stranded DNA molecules. We show that the hybridization of the overlapping pi orbitals in the base-pair stack coupled to the backbone is…
In recent years, significant progress in understanding the properties of supercoiled DNA has been obtained due to nanotechniques that made stretching and twisting of single molecules possible. Quantitative interpretation of such experiments…
DNA supercoiling, the under or overwinding of DNA, is a key physical mechanism both participating to compaction of bacterial genomes and making genomic sequences adopt various structural forms. DNA supercoiling may lead to the formation of…
We here present a variable-range hopping model to describe the chirality-induced spin selectivity along the DNA double helix. In this model, DNA is considered as a one-dimensional disordered system, where electrons are transported by chiral…
Effects of sequence disorder on looping and cyclization of the double-stranded DNA are studied theoretically. Both random intrinsic curvature and inhomogeneous bending rigidity are found to result in a remarkably wide distribution of…
Large-scale DNA deformation is ubiquitous in transcriptional regulation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes alike. Though much is known about how transcription factors and constellations of binding sites dictate where and how gene regulation will…