Related papers: DNA size in confined environments
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…
A three dimensional mesoscopic model is applied to study the properties of short DNA chains in a confining environment. The cylindrical channel is represented by a hard-wall repulsive potential incorporated in the system Hamiltonian. The…
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…
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.…
We present a computational method to evaluate the end-to-end and the contour length distribution functions of short DNA molecules described by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian. The method generates a large statistical ensemble of possible…
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…
Macromolecular crowding plays a principal role in a wide range of biological processes including gene expression, chromosomal compaction, and viral infection. However, the impact that crowding has on the dynamics of nucleic acids remains a…
Motivated by recent experiments probing shape, size and dynamics of bacterial chromosomes in growing cells, we consider a polymer model consisting of a circular backbone to which side-loops are attached, confined to a cylindrical cell. Such…
Nucleic acids are highly deformable helical molecules constantly stretched, twisted and bent in their biological functioning. Single molecule experiments have shown that double stranded (ds)-RNA and standard ds-DNA have opposite…
We investigate the conformations of DNA-like stiff chains, characterized by contour length ($L$) and persistence length ($l_p$), in a variety of crowded environments containing mono disperse soft spherical (SS) and spherocylindrical (SC)…
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…
Nucleic acids have been regarded as stiff polymers with long-range flexibility and generally modeled using elastic rod models of polymer physics. Notwithstanding, investigations carried out over the past few years on single fragments of…
We study the effect of crowders on the melting profile of homogeneous and heterogeneous DNA molecules. We find out the melting profile of short DNA molecules and compare our findings with the experiments. We consider some random…
When the DNA double helix is subjected to external forces it can stretch elastically to elongations reaching 100% of its natural length. These distortions, imposed at the mesoscopic or macroscopic scales, have a dramatic effect on…
Although mechanical properties of DNA are well characterized at the kilo base-pair range, a number of recent experiments have suggested that DNA is more flexible at shorter length scales, which correspond to the regime that is crucial for…
The sequence-dependent elasticity of double-helical DNA on a nm length scale can be captured by the rigid base-pair model, whose strains are the relative position and orientation of adjacent base-pairs. Corresponding elastic potentials have…
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…
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…
DNA inside the cellular environment works under a confined space. An intense research of the transcription and replication of DNA in the confined state is structurally significant to command the self assembly of DNA in a chamber or channel.…
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…