Related papers: Helical Disruptions in Small Loops of DNA
The interplay between bending of the molecule axis and appearance of disruptions in circular DNA molecules, with $\sim 100$ base pairs, is addressed. Three minicircles with different radii and almost equal content of AT and GC pairs are…
The base pair fluctuations and helix untwisting are examined for a circular molecule. A realistic mesoscopic model including twisting degrees of freedom and bending of the molecular axis is proposed. The computational method, based on path…
Complementary strands in DNA double helix show temporary fluctuational openings which are essential to biological functions such as transcription and replication of the genetic information. Such large amplitude fluctuations, known as the…
The thermodynamical stability of a set of circular double helical molecules is analyzed by path integral techniques. The minicircles differ only in \textit{i)} the radius and \textit{ii)} the number of base pairs ($N$) arranged along the…
The thermodynamic properties of DNA circular molecules are investigated by a new path integral computational method which treats in the real space the fundamental forces stabilizing the molecule. The base pair and stacking contributions to…
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…
The flexibility of short DNA chains is investigated via computation of the average correlation function between dimers which defines the persistence length. Path integration techniques have been applied to confine the phase space available…
A statistical method is developed to estimate the maximum amplitude of the base pair fluctuations in a three dimensional mesoscopic model for nucleic acids. The base pair thermal vibrations around the helix diameter are viewed as a Brownian…
The thermodynamical properties of heterogeneous DNA sequences are computed by path integral techniques applied to a nonlinear model Hamiltonian. The base pairs relative displacements are interpreted as time dependent paths whose amplitudes…
Multistep denaturation in a short circular DNA molecule is analyzed by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian model which accounts for the helicoidal geometry. Computation of melting profiles by the path integral method suggests that stacking…
Helical molecules change their twist number under the effect of a mechanical load. We study the twist-stretch relation for a set of short DNA molecules modeled by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian. Finite temperature path integral techniques are…
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 twisting deformation of mechanically stretched DNA molecules is studied by a coarse grained Hamiltonian model incorporating the fundamental interactions that stabilize the double helix and accounting for the radial and angular base pair…
The flexibility of short DNA fragments is studied by a Hamiltonian model which treats the inter-strand and intra-strand forces at the level of the base pair. The elastic response of a set of homogeneous helices to externally applied forces…
The imaginary time path integral formalism is applied to a nonlinear Hamiltonian for a short fragment of heterogeneous DNA with a stabilizing solvent interaction term. Torsional effects are modeled by a twist angle between neighboring base…
The closure of long equilibrated denaturation bubbles in DNA is studied using Brownian dynamics simulations. A minimal mesoscopic model is used where the double-helix is made of two interacting bead-spring freely rotating strands, with a…
The formation of bubbles in nucleic acids (NAs) are fundamental in many biological processes such as DNA replication, recombination, telomeres formation, nucleotide excision repair, as well as RNA transcription and splicing. These precesses…
At present, there have been suggested two types of physical mechanism that may facilitate preferential pairing between DNA molecules, with identical or similar base pair texts, without separation of base pairs. One solely relies on base…
Nucleic acids physical properties have been investigated by theoretical methods based both on fully atomistic representations and on coarse grained models, e.g. the worm-like-chain, taken from polymer physics. In this article, I present an…
I present a Hamiltonian model and a computational method suitable to evaluate structural and thermodynamic properties of helical molecules embedded in crowded environments which may confine the space available to the base pair fluctuations.…