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We simulate the assembly of DNA copolymers from two types of short duplexes (short double strands with a single-stranded overhang at each end), as described by the oxDNA model. We find that the statistics of chain lengths can be well…
We use a recently developed coarse-grained model to simulate the overstretching of duplex DNA. Overstretching at 23C occurs at 74 pN in the model, about 6-7 pN higher than the experimental value at equivalent salt conditions. Furthermore,…
DNA and RNA quadruplexes are extensively studied for the key roles they are suspected to play in the cellular regulation networks at both genomic and transcriptomic levels. The reliable detection of quadruplexes in cells was and remains a…
The formation of bubble defects of the double stranded DNA is treated according to the Lifshits theory of disordered chains. A molecule of the DNA is modelled on a harmonic lattice with nearest neighbour interaction, elastic constants being…
The histone-DNA interaction in the nucleosome is a fundamental mechanism of genomic compaction and regulation, which remains largely unkown despite a growing structural knowledge of the complex. Here, we propose a framework for the…
Double-stranded DNA `overstretches' at a pulling force of about 65 pN, increasing in length by a factor of 1.7. The nature of the overstretched state is unknown, despite its considerable importance for DNA's biological function and…
The folding of biological macromolecules is a fundamental process of which we lack a full comprehension. Mostly studied in proteins and RNA, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) also folds, at physiological salt conditions, by forming non-specific…
The hybridization and dehybridization of DNA subject to tension is relevant to fundamental genetic processes and to the design of DNA-based mechanobiology assays. While strong tension accelerates DNA melting and decelerates DNA annealing,…
Force-induced structural transitions both in relatively random and in designed single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) chains are studied theoretically. At high salt conditions, ssDNA forms compacted hairpin patterns stabilized by base-pairing and…
Recent experimental results by the Surface Force Apparatus (SFA) have identified a dramatic deviation from previously established theories of simple electrolytes. This deviation, referred to as anomalous underscreening, suggests that the…
We study the effects of the shear force on the rupture mechanism on a double stranded DNA. Motivated by recent experiments, we perform the atomistic simulations with explicit solvent to obtain the distributions of extension in hydrogen and…
Strong-field physics is currently experiencing a shift towards the use of mid-IR driving wavelengths. This is because they permit conducting experiments unambiguously in the quasi-static regime and enable exploiting the effects related to…
We present a new method for calculating internal forces in DNA structures using coarse-grained models and demonstrate its utility with the oxDNA model. The instantaneous forces on individual nucleotides are explored and related to model…
The Histone-like Nucleoid Structuring protein (H-NS) is a nucleoid-associated protein, which is involved in both gene regulation and DNA compaction. Although it is a key player in genome organization by forming bridges between DNA duplexes,…
We describe quantitatively a RNA molecule under the influence of an external force exerted at its two ends as in a typical single-molecule experiment. Our calculation incorporates the interactions between nucleotides by using the…
We present a base-pairing model of oligonuleotide duplex formation and show in detail its equivalence to the Nearest-Neighbour dimer methods from fits to free energy of duplex formation data for short DNA-DNA and DNA-RNA hybrids containing…
While stretching of most polymer chains leads to rather featureless force-extension diagrams, some, notably DNA, exhibit non-trivial behavior with a distinct plateau region. Here we propose a unified theory that connects force-extension…
The sequence-dependent structural variability and conformational dynamics of DNA play pivotal roles in many biological milieus, such as in the site-specific binding of transcription factors to target regulatory elements. To better…
Although DNA is often bent in vivo, it is unclear how DNA-bending forces modulate DNA-protein binding affinity. Here, we report how a range of DNA-bending forces modulates the binding of the Integration Host Factor (IHF) protein to various…
The strong bending of polymers is poorly understood. We propose a general quantitative framework of polymer bending that includes both the weak and strong bending regimes on the same footing, based on a single general physical principle. As…