Related papers: Ion assisted structural collapse of a single stran…
We compare the recent experimentally measured forces between charged colloidal particles, as well as their effective surface potentials (surface charge) in the presence of multivalent counterions in a bathing monovalent salt solution, with…
Single molecule force spectroscopy of DNA strands adsorbed at surfaces is a powerful technique used in air or liquid environments to quantify their mechanical properties. Although the force responses are limited to unfolding events so far,…
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…
We present simulation results and an explanatory theory on how antagonistic salts affect the spinodal decomposition of binary fluid mixtures. We find that spinodal decomposition is arrested and complex structures form only when…
Even though the persistence length $L_P$ of double-stranded DNA plays a pivotal role in cell biology and nanotechnologies, its dependence on ionic strength $I$ lacks a consensual description. Using a high-throughput single-molecule…
Using the Langevin Dynamics simulation, we have studied the effects of the shear force on the rupture of short double stranded DNA at different temperatures. We show that the rupture force increases linearly with the chain length and…
The recently proposed compressed backbone theory suggested that the intrinsic curvature in DNA can result from a geometric mismatch between the specific backbone length and optimal base stacking orientations. It predicted that the curvature…
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…
The strong bending of polymers is poorly understood. We propose a general quantitative framework of polymer bending that includes both the weak and strong bending regimes on the same footing, based on a single general physical principle. As…
The 3'-monofunctional adduct of cisplatin and d(CTCTG*G*TCTC)2 duplex DNA in solvent with explicit counter ions and water molecules were subjected to MD- simulation with AMBER force field on a nanosecond time scale. In order to simulate the…
Tasker type III polar terminations of ionic crystals carry a net surface charge as well as a dipole moment and are fundamentally unstable. In contact with electrolytes, such polar surfaces can be stabilized by adsorption of counter ions…
The question of whether DNA is intrinsically conducting or not is still a challenge. The ongoing debate on DNA molecules as an electronic material has so far underestimated a key distinction of the system: the role of base pairing (inter…
Under appropriate conditions, mixtures of cationic and neutral lipids and DNA in water condense into complexes in which DNA strands form local 2D smectic lattices intercalated between lipid bilayer membranes in a lamellar stack. These…
DNA supercoiling is central to many fundamental processes of living organisms. Its average level along the chromosome and over time reflects the dynamic equilibrium of opposite activities of topoisomerases, which are required to relax…
Biomolecules couple to their aqueous environment through a variety of noncovalent interactions. Local structures at the surface of DNA and RNA are frequently determined by hydrogen bonds with water molecules, complemented by non-specific…
Single molecule studies, at constant force, of the separation of double-stranded DNA into two separated single strands may provide information relevant to the dynamics of DNA replication. At constant applied force, theory predicts that the…
Translocation of a single stranded DNA through genetically engineered $\alpha$-hemolysin channels with positively charged walls is studied. It is predicted that transport properties of such channels are dramatically different from neutral…
We propose a model for DNA dynamics by introducing the helical structure through twist deformation in analogy with the structure of helimagnet and cholesteric liquid crystal system. The dynamics in this case is found to be governed by the…
Ion specificity and related Hofmeister effects, ubiquitous in aqueous systems, can have spectacular consequences in hydrated clays, where ion-specific nanoscale surface forces can determine large scale cohesive, swelling and shrinkage…
Attraction between two indentical objects uniformly charged in solution seems intuitively surprising on the one hand because we know that such objects do repel in vacuum and on another hand because this simple mental picture is still…