Related papers: Coarse-grained modelling of strong DNA bending II:…
Recent advances in operating and manipulating DNA have provided unique experimental possibilities in many fields of DNA research, especially in gene therapy. Researchers have deployed many techniques, experimental and theoretical, to study…
Single-molecule experiments provide new insights into biological processes hitherto not accessible by measurements performed on bulk systems. We report on a study of the kinetics of a triple-branch DNA molecule with four conformational…
DNA deformations play crucial roles in many biological processes and material applications. During DNA deformation, DNA structural parameters often exhibit non-trivial and counterintuitive couplings, such as the twist-stretch and…
We propose that the degree of sweeling of the 30nm chromatin fiber (a "measure" of its transcriptional activity) is mainly determined by the short-ranged electrostatical interaction between different sections of the "folded" DNA chain.…
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…
Genomic DNA is constantly subjected to various mechanical stresses arising from its biological functions and cell packaging. If the local mechanical properties of DNA change under torsional and tensional stress, the activity of…
We study the force-induced unfolding of random disordered RNA or single-stranded DNA polymers. The system undergoes a second order phase transition from a collapsed globular phase at low forces to an extensive necklace phase with a…
In a similar way in which the folding of single--domain proteins provide an important test in the study of self--organization, the folding of homodimers constitute a basic challenge in the quest for the mechanisms which are at the basis of…
We modify and extend the recently developed statistical mechanical model for predicting the thermodynamic properties of chain molecules having noncovalent double-stranded conformations, as in RNA or ssDNA, and $\beta-$sheets in protein, by…
We propose a generic model of driven DNA under the influence of an oscillatory force of amplitude $F$ and frequency $\nu$ and show the existence of a dynamical transition for a chain of finite length. We find that the area of the hysteresis…
A simple model of DNA based on two interacting polymers has been used to study the unzipping of a double stranded DNA subjected to a periodic force. We propose a dynamical transition, where without changing the physiological condition, it…
In this paper, we show that the coarse grain model for DNA, which has been proposed recently by Knotts, Rathore, Schwartz and de Pablo (J. Chem. Phys. 126, 084901 (2007)), can be adapted to describe the thermal and mechanical denaturation…
We present a theoretical study of single-stranded DNA under stretching. Within the proposed framework, the effects of basepairing on the mechanical response of the molecule can be studied in combination with an arbitrary underlying model of…
We show that a mesoscale model, with a minimal number of parameters, can well describe the thermomechanical and mechanochemical behavior of homogeneous DNA at thermal equilibrium under tension and torque. We predict critical temperatures…
By combining analytical results and simulations of various coarse-grained models we investigate the minimal energy shape of DNA minicircles which are torsionally constrained by an imposed over or undertwist. We show that twist-bend…
In many biochemical processes, proteins bound to DNA at distant sites are brought into close proximity by loops in the underlying DNA. For example, the function of some gene-regulatory proteins depends on such DNA looping interactions. We…
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…
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…
We calculate the equation of state of DNA under tension for the case that the DNA features loops. Such loops occur transiently during DNA condensation in the presence of multivalent ions or sliding cationic protein linkers. The…
Aiming at the mechanical properties of cross-linked biopolymers, we set up and analyze a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains subjected to a tensile force, with regularly spaced inter-chain bonds (cross-links) represented by harmonic…