Related papers: Nanoconfined circular and linear DNA - equilibrium…
Nanochannels provide means for detailed experiments on the effect of confinement on biomacromolecules, such as DNA. We here introduce a model for the complete unfolding of DNA from the circular to linear configuration. Two main ingredients…
A scaling analysis is presented of the statistics of long DNA confined in nanochannels and nanoslits. It is argued that there are several regimes in between the de Gennes and Odijk limits introduced long ago. The DNA chain folds back on…
Advanced Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the effect of nano-slit confinement on metric and topological properties of model DNA chains. We consider both linear and circularised chains with contour lengths in the 1.2--4.8 $\mu$m…
The extension of DNA confined to nanochannels has been studied intensively and in detail. Yet quantitative comparisons between experiments and model calculations are difficult because most theoretical predictions involve undetermined…
We examine the conformations of a model for a short segment of closed DNA. The molecule is represented as a cylindrically symmetric elastic rod with a constraint corresponding to a specification of the linking number. We obtain analytic…
We study numerically the mechanical stability and elasticity properties of duplex DNA molecules within the frame of a network model incorporating microscopic degrees of freedom related with the arrangement of the base pairs. We pay special…
A DNA-protein complex modelled by a semiflexible chain and an attractive spherical core is studied in the situation when an external stretching force is acting on one end monomer of the chain while the other end monomer is kept fixed in…
The amount and type of self-entanglement of DNA filaments is significantly affected by spatial confinement, which is ubiquitous in biological systems. Motivated by recent advancements in single DNA molecule experiments based on nanofluidic…
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…
We study how the orientational correlations of DNA confined to nanochannels depend on the channel diameter D by means of Monte Carlo simulations and a mean-field theory. This theory describes DNA conformations in the experimentally relevant…
Circular double stranded DNA has different topological states which are defined by their linking numbers. Equilibrium distribution of linking numbers can be obtained by closing a linear DNA into a circle by ligase. Using Monte Carlo…
Theoretical results for the extension of a polymer confined to a channel are usually derived in the limit of infinite contour length. But experimental studies and simulations of DNA molecules confined to nanochannels are not necessarily in…
The control over DNA elongation in nanofluidic devices holds great potential for large-scale genomic analysis. So far, the manipulation of DNA in nanochannels has been mostly carried out with electrophoresis and seldom with hydrodynamics,…
The phase diagram of a water solution of DNA and oppositely charged spherical macroions is studied. DNA winds around spheres to form beads-on-a-string complexes resembling the chromatin 10 nm fiber. At small enough concentration of spheres…
A theory is presented of DNA hairpins enclosed in a nanochannel. A hairpin becomes constrained as it approaches the wall of a channel which leads to an entropic force causing the hairpin to tighten. The free energy of the hairpin computed…
Single T4-DNA molecules were confined in rectangular-shaped channels with a depth of 300 nm and a width in the range 150-300 nm casted in a poly(dimethylsiloxane) nanofluidic chip. The extensions of the DNA molecules were measured with…
We use an elastic rod model with contact to study the extension versus rotation diagrams of single supercoiled DNA molecules. We reproduce quantitatively the supercoiling response of overtwisted DNA and, using experimental data, we get an…
We use a nanofluidic system to investigate the emergence of thermally driven collective phenomena along a single polymer chain. In our approach, a single DNA molecule is confined in a nanofluidic slit etched with arrays of embedded…
In living cells, proteins combine 3D bulk diffusion and 1D sliding along the DNA to reach a target faster. This process is known as facilitated diffusion, and we investigate its dynamics in the physiologically relevant case of confined DNA.…
The chiral nature of DNA plays a crucial role in cellular processes. Here we use magnetic tweezers to explore one of the signatures of this chirality, the coupling between stretch and twist deformations. We show that the extension of a…