Related papers: Supercoiling Enhances DNA Mobility by Reducing Thr…
In analogy with classic rigidity problems of networks and frames, the elastic properties of hydrogels made of DNA nanostars (DNAns) are expected to strongly depend on the precise geometry of their building blocks. However, it is currently…
The design of hydrogels that combine mechanical robustness with dynamic reconfigurability remains a fundamental challenge, as increasing crosslink dissociation rates compromise network integrity. This limitation is addressed through the…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…
We review statistical-mechanical theories of single-molecule micromanipulation experiments on nucleic acids. First, models for describing polymer elasticity are introduced. We then review how these models are used to interpret…
Three coarse-grained models of the double-stranded DNA are proposed and compared in the context of mechanical manipulation such as twisting and various schemes of stretching. The models differ in the number of effective beads (between two…
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…
The effect of sequence heterogeneity on polynucleotide translocation across a pore and on simple models of molecular motors such as helicases, DNA polymerase/exonuclease and RNA polymerase is studied in detail. Pore translocation of RNA or…
Using high-resolution confocal rheometry, we study the shear profiles of well-entangled DNA solutions under large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) in a rectilinear planar shear cell. With increasing Weissenberg number (Wi), we observe…
The quite recent technological rise in molecular biology allowed single molecule manipulation experiments, where molecule stretching plays a primary role. In order to understand the experimental data, it is felt the urge of some physical…
Many proteins interact with and deform double-stranded DNA in cells. Single-molecule experiments have studied the elasticity of DNA with helix-deforming proteins, including proteins that bend DNA. These experiments increase the need for…
Magnetic tweezers are used to study the mechanical response under torsion of single nucleosome arrays reconstituted on tandem repeats of 5S positioning sequences. Regular arrays are extremely resilient and can reversibly accommodate a large…
Polymer translocation is a promising strategy for the next-generation DNA sequencing technologies. The use of biological and synthetic nano-pores, however, still suffers from serious drawbacks. In particular, the width of the membrane layer…
For an understanding of DNA elasticity at high mechanical loads (F > 30 pN), its helical nature needs to be taken into account, in the form of coupling between the twist and stretch degrees of freedom. The prevailing model for DNA…
We have developed a generalized semi-analytic approach for efficiently computing cyclization and looping $J$ factors of DNA under arbitrary binding constraints. Many biological systems involving DNA-protein interactions impose precise…
A double stranded DNA molecule under the stress of a pulling force acting on the strand terminals exhibits a partially denatured structure or can be completely unzipped depending the magnitude of the pulling force. A scaling argument for…
Debates about conductivity of DNAs have been recently renewed due to contradictory results of direct measurements by use of electrical contacts to molecules. In several works it was discovered that double-stranded (ds)DNAs are conductors:…
The adsorption of DNA or other polyelectrolyte molecules on charged membranes is a recurrent motif in soft matter and bionanotechnological systems. Two typical situations encountered are the deposition of single DNA chains onto substrates…
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…
Colloidal particles grafted with single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) chains can self-assemble into a number of different crystalline structures, where hybridization of the ssDNA chains creates links between colloids stabilizing their structure.…
We present a method of detecting sequence defects by supercoiling DNA with magnetic tweezers. The method is sensitive to a single mismatched base pair in a DNA sequence of several thousand base pairs. We systematically compare DNA molecules…