Related papers: Life without dUTPase
DNA is emerging as an increasingly attractive medium for data storage due to a number of important and unique advantages it offers, most notably the unprecedented durability and density. While the technology is evolving rapidly, the…
The spatial organization of DNA involves DNA loop extrusion and the formation of protein-DNA condensates. While the significance of each process is increasingly recognized, their interplay remains unexplored. Using molecular dynamics…
Genes are not located randomly along genomes. Synteny, the conservation of their relative positions in genomes of different species, reflects fundamental constraints on natural evolution. We present approaches to infer pairs of co-localized…
Analysis of single-molecule micromanipulation experiments of DNA unzipping process shows some features of the force-distance curve, namely two consequent plateaus in the area of ${\sim}12-14pN$ dependent on nucleotide sequence structure, as…
Recent experiments of translocation of double stranded DNA through nanopores [M. Wanunu \textit{et al.} Nature Nanotech. {\bf 5}, 160 (2010)] reveal that the DNA capture rate can be significantly influenced by a salt gradient across the…
Background/ Objectives: Resolving the origin of the genetic code is fundamental to understanding how life began its journey out of the chemical world. Since its deciphering some 60 years ago, there is still no general theory of the…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the equilibrium distribution of monovalent ions in a nanopore connecting two water reservoirs separated by a membrane, both for the empty pore and that with a single stranded DNA molecule…
The problem of inhibiting viral DNA ejection from bacteriophages by multivalent counterions, specifically Mg$^{+2}$ counterions, is studied. Experimentally, it is known that MgSO$_4$ salt has a strong and non-monotonic effect on the amount…
Gene regulation in higher eukaryotes involves a complex interplay between the gene proximal promoter and distal genomic elements (such as enhancers) which work in concert to drive spatio-temporal expression. The experimental…
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…
While the statistical mechanical description of DNA has a long tradition, renewed interest in DNA melting from a physics perspective is nourished by measurements of the fluctuation dynamics of local denaturation bubbles by single molecule…
Damaged or mismatched bases in DNA can be repaired by Base Excision Repair (BER) enzymes that replace the defective base. Although the detailed molecular structures of many BER enzymes are known, how they colocalize to lesions remains…
Tandem duplications are an essential source of genetic novelty, and their variation in natural populations is expected to influence adaptive walks. Here, we describe evolutionary impacts of recently-derived, segregating tandem duplications…
We consider the correction of errors from nucleotide sequences produced by next-generation targeted amplicon sequencing. The next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms can provide a great deal of sequencing data thanks to their high…
We present a simple route to circumvent kinetic traps which affect many types of DNA nanostructures in their self-assembly process. Using this method, a new 2D DNA lattice made up of short, single-stranded tile (SST) motifs was created.…
Addressing the functionality of genomes is one of the most important and challenging tasks of today's biology. In particular the ability to link genotypes to corresponding phenotypes is of interest in the reconstruction and biotechnological…
The formation of DNA loops by proteins and protein complexes that bind at distal DNA sites plays a central role in many cellular processes, such as transcription, recombination, and replication. Here we review the basic thermodynamic…
The nucleotides guanosine tetraphosphate (ppGpp) and guanosine pentaphosphate (pppGpp) bind to target proteins to promote bacterial survival (Corrigan et al. 2016). Thus, the binding of the nucleotides to RsgA, a GTPase, inhibits the…
Bacterial genomes have been shown to be partitioned into several kilobases long chromosomal domains that are topologically independent from each other, meaning that change of DNA superhelicity in one domain does not propagate to neighbors.…
In the recent years, DNA has emerged as a potentially viable storage technology. DNA synthesis, which refers to the task of writing the data into DNA, is perhaps the most costly part of existing storage systems. Accordingly, this high cost…