Related papers: DNA sequence-dependent mechanics and protein-assis…
Cells receive a wide variety of cellular and environmental signals, which must be processed combinatorially to generate specific and timely genetic responses. We present here a theoretical study on the combinatorial control and integration…
Mutation is a critical mechanism by which evolution explores the functional landscape of proteins. Despite our ability to experimentally inflict mutations at will, it remains difficult to link sequence-level perturbations to systems-level…
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 genetic information that dictates the structure and function of all life forms is encoded in the DNA. In 1953, Watson and Crick first presented the double helical structure of a DNA molecule. Their findings unearthed the desire to…
Although DNA is often bent in vivo, it is unclear how DNA-bending forces modulate DNA-protein binding affinity. Here, we report how a range of DNA-bending forces modulates the binding of the Integration Host Factor (IHF) protein to various…
This paper extends on a recent work where it was shown that forces dependent on the helical structure may cause two DNA molecules to spontaneously braid [R. Cortini et Al, Biophys. J. 101, 875 (2011)]. Here, bending fluctuations of DNA…
The response of a short DNA segment to bending is studied, taking into account the anisotropy in the bending rigidities caused by the double-helical structure. It is shown that the anisotropy introduces an effective nonlinear twist-bend…
Modern genomics experiments measure functional behaviors for many thousands of DNA sequences. We suggest that, especially when these sequences are chosen at random, it is natural to compute correlation functions between sequences and…
Tethered particle experiments use light microscopy to measure the position of a micrometer-sized bead tethered to a microscope slide via a ~micrometer length polymer, in order to infer the behavior of the invisible polymer. Currently, this…
The macroscopic curvature induced in the double helical B-DNA by regularly repeated adenine tracts (A-tracts) is a long known, but still unexplained phenomenon. This effect plays a key role in DNA studies because it is unique in the amount…
DNA amplification is the process of replication of a specified DNA sequence \emph{in vitro} through time-dependent manipulation of its external environment. A theoretical framework for determination of the optimal dynamic operating…
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…
Multivalent interactions between deformable mesoscopic units are ubiquitous in biology, where membrane macromolecules mediate the interactions between neighbouring living cells and between cells and solid substrates. Lately, analogous…
The bistable gene regulatory switch controlling the transition from lysogeny to lysis in bacteriophage lambda presents a unique challenge to quantitative modeling. Despite extensive characterization of this regulatory network, the origin of…
This paper presents a numerical study of the dynamics of DNA double helix breakage under the influence of external forces using the Peyrard-Bishop-Dauxois (PBD) model. The PBD model represents DNA as a chain of nonlinearly coupled…
We present a self-contained theory for the mechanical response of DNA in single molecule experiments. Our model is based on a 1D continuum description of the DNA molecule and accounts both for its elasticity and for DNA-DNA electrostatic…
We investigate the dynamics of DNA translocation through a nanopore using 2D Langevin dynamics simulations, focusing on the dependence of the translocation dynamics on the details of DNA sequences. The DNA molecules studied in this work are…
Deciphering how DNA sequence encodes gene regulation remains a central challenge in biology. Advances in machine learning and functional genomics have enabled sequence-to-function (seq2func) models that predict molecular regulatory readouts…
The effective DNA-DNA interaction force is calculated by computer simulations with explicit tetravalent counterions and monovalent salt. For overcharged DNA molecules, the interaction force shows a double-minimum structure. The positions…
Membrane neck formation is essential for scission, which, as recent experiments on tubules have demonstrated, can be location dependent. The diversity of biological machinery that can constrict a neck such as dynamin, actin, ESCRTs and BAR…