Related papers: Blunt-end driven re-entrant ordering in quasi two-…
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)…
For short DNA molecules in crowded environments, we evaluate macroscopic parameters such as the average end-to-end distance and the twist conformation by tuning the strength of the site specific confinement driven by the crowders. The…
In biology experiments, oligonucleotide microarrays are contacted with a solution of long nucleic acid (NA) targets. The hybridized probes thus carry long tails. When the surface density of the oligonucleotide probes is high enough, the…
We propose that supercoiling energizes double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) so as to facilitate thermal fluctuations to an unzipped state. We support this with a model of two elastic rods coupled via forces that represent base pair interactions.…
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…
We develop further a statistical model coupling denaturation and chain conformations in DNA (Palmeri J, Manghi M and Destainville N 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 088103). Our Discrete Helical Wormlike Chain model takes explicitly into account…
Surface roughness affects many properties of colloids, from depletion [1] and capillary interactions [2], to their dispersibility [3] and use as emulsion stabilizers [4]. It also impacts particle-particle frictional contacts, which have…
Monodisperse suspensions of Brownian colloidal spheres crystallize at high densities, and ordering under shear has been observed at densities below the crystallization threshold. We perform large-scale simulations of a model suspension…
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…
Enzymatic ligation is essential for the synthesis of long DNA. However, the number of ligated products exponentially decays as the DNA synthesis proceeds in a random manner. The controlling of ligation randomness is of importance to…
This paper aims at a comprehensive understanding on the novel elastic property of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) discovered very recently through single-molecule manipulation techniques. A general elastic model for double-stranded biopolymers…
Negatively charged DNA can be compacted by positively charged dendrimers and the degree of compaction is a delicate balance between the strength of the electrostatic interaction and the elasticity of DNA. We report various elastic…
We study theoretically a binary system in which an attraction of unlike particles is combined with a type-independent soft core repulsion. The possible experimental implementation of the system is a mixture of DNA-covered colloids, in which…
Recent experiments have shown that trivalent ion, spermidine$^{3+}$, can provoke lateral microphase segregation in DNA brushes. Using molecular simulations and simple theoretical arguments, we explore the effects of trivalent counterions on…
Inclusions in mobile brushes experience apparent (depletion) attraction, which arises from a tendency to minimize the volume of depletion zones around the inclusions, thereby to maximize the entropy of the surrounding polymers. Here, we…
Dynamic particle-scale numerical simulations are used to show that the shear thickening observed in dense colloidal, or Brownian, suspensions is of a similar nature to that observed in non-colloidal suspensions, i.e., a stress-induced…
The aim of the present paper is the study of the entropic elasticity of the dsDNA molecule, having a cristallographic length L of the order of 10 to 30 persistence lengths A, when it is subject to spatial obstructions. We have not tried to…
Short blunt-ended DNA duplexes comprising 6 to 20 base pairs self-assemble into polydisperse semi-flexible chains due to hydrophobic stacking interactions between terminal base pairs. Above a critical concentration, which depends on…
A unified model is constructed to study the recently observed DNA entropic elasticity, cooperative extensibility, and supercoiling property. With the introduction of a new structural parameter (the folding angle $\phi$), bending…
We report spin-selective tunneling of electrons along natural and artificial double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) sandwiched by nonmagnetic leads. The results reveal that the spin polarization strongly depends on the dsDNA sequence and is dominated…