Related papers: DNA toroids form via a flower intermediate
Polymer composites are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, owing to their emergent desirable mechanical properties not attainable in single-species systems. At the same time, polymer topology has been shown to play a key role in…
In living systems, DNA undergoes continuous and rhythmic mechanical remodeling through condensation, looping, and disentangling to regulate gene expression, segregate chromosomes, and guide morphogenesis. Here, we demonstrate a purely…
Recent experiments have been able to visualise chromosome organization in fast-growing E.coli cells. However, the mechanism underlying the spatio-temporal organization remains poorly understood. We propose that the DNA adopts a specific…
Genetic information is stored in a linear sequence of base-pairs; however, thermal fluctuations and complex DNA conformations such as folds and loops make it challenging to order genomic material for in vitro analysis. In this work, we…
Double-stranded DNA translocates through sufficiently large nanopores either in a linear, single-file fashion or in a folded hairpin conformation when captured somewhere along its length. We show that the folding state of DNA can be…
The transport of macromolecules, such as DNA, through the cytoskeleton is critical to wide-ranging cellular processes from cytoplasmic streaming to transcription. The rigidity and steric hindrances imparted by the network of filaments…
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 3D organisation of the genome in interphase cells is not a randomly folded polymer. Rather, experiments show that chromosomes arrange into a network of 3D compartments that correlate with biological processes, such as transcription,…
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.…
Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, store their micron long DNA inside an icosahedral capsid with a typical diameter of 40 nm to 100 nm. Consistent with experimental observations, such confinement conditions induce an arrangement…
DNA-coated colloids can crystallize into a multitude of lattices, ranging from face-centered cubic to diamond and thereby contribute to our understanding of crystallization and open avenues to producing structures with useful photonic…
We present a multi-scale simulation of early stage of DNA damages by the indirect action of hydroxyl ($^\bullet$OH) free radicals generated by electrons and protons. The computational method comprises of interfacing the Geant4-DNA Monte…
We study the mechanism underlying the attraction between nucleosomes, the fundamental packaging units of DNA inside the chromatin complex. We introduce a simple model of the nucleosome, the eight-tail colloid, consisting of a charged sphere…
We construct a theoretical model for the dynamics of a microscale colloidal particle, modeled as an interval, moving horizontally on a DNA-coated surface, modelled as a line coated with springs that can stick to the interval. Averaging over…
We examine the crystallization dynamics of nanoparticles reversibly tethered by DNA hybridization. We show that the crystallization happens readily only in a narrow temperature "slot," and always proceeds via a two-step process, mediated by…
The first level of folding of DNA in eukaryotes is provided by the so called '10 nm chromatin fibre', where DNA wraps around histone proteins (approx. 10 nm in size) to form nucleosomes, which go on to create a zig zagging bead on a string…
Topology affects physical and biological properties of DNA and impacts fundamental cellular processes, such as gene expression, genome replication, chromosome structure and segregation. In all organisms DNA topology is carefully modulated…
We study the tautomeric transitions in base pairs of DNA considering elastic properties of DNA as classical and tunneling of protons as quantum, and show that the dynamics of the transitions admits of soliton like solutions whose shape and…
DNA-coated colloids can self-assemble into an incredible diversity of crystal structures, but applications of this technology are limited by poor understanding and control over the dynamical crystallization pathways. To address this…
Inverted repeat (IR) sequences in DNA can form non-canonical cruciform structures to relieve torsional stress. We use Monte Carlo simulations of a recently developed coarse-grained model of DNA to demonstrate that the nucleation of a…