Related papers: Statistical models for nucleic acids
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…
We report model calculations on DNA single strands which describe the equilibrium dynamics and kinetics of hairpin formation and melting. Modeling is at the level of single bases. Strand rigidity is described in terms of simple polymer…
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.…
The presence of low dimensional chaos in the protein secondary structures, using the binary coded $\alpha$-helices and $\beta$-sheet motifs, has been investigated. In order to analyse symbolic DNA/RNA sequences the assignment, based on the…
The thermodynamical properties of heterogeneous DNA sequences are computed by path integral techniques applied to a nonlinear model Hamiltonian. The base pairs relative displacements are interpreted as time dependent paths whose amplitudes…
The approach for the description of the DNA conformational transformations on the mesoscopic scales in the frame of the double helix is presented. Due to consideration of the joint motions of DNA structural elements along the conformational…
The macroscopic curvature of double helical DNA induced by regularly repeated adenine tracts is well-known but still puzzling. Its physical origin remains controversial even though it is perhaps the best-documented sequence modulation of…
The probability distributions for bending angles in double helical DNA obtained in all-atom molecular dynamics simulations are compared with theoretical predictions. The computed distributions remarkably agree with the worm-like chain…
Because of the double-helical structure of DNA, in which two strands of complementary nucleotides intertwine around each other, a covalently closed DNA molecule with no interruptions in either strand can be viewed as two interlocked…
The macroscopic curvature induced in the double helical B-DNA by regularly repeated adenine tracts (A-tracts) is a long known, but still unexplained phenomenon. This effect plays a key role in DNA studies because it is unique in the amount…
A revised Marko-Siggia elastic model for DNA double helix [Macromolecules 27, 981 (1994)] is proposed, which includes the WLC bending energy and a new chiral twisting energy term. It is predicted that the mean helical repeat length (HRL)…
We introduce a coarse-grained rigid nucleotide model of DNA that reproduces the basic thermodynamics of short strands: duplex hybridization, single-stranded stacking and hairpin formation, and also captures the essential structural…
The functioning of double-stranded (ds) nucleic acids (NAs) in cellular processes is strongly mediated by their elastic response. These processes involve proteins that interact with dsDNA or dsRNA and distort their structures. The…
The intricate network of interactions observed in RNA three-dimensional structures is often described in terms of a multitude of geometrical properties, including helical parameters, base pairing/stacking, hydrogen bonding and backbone…
We report a structural polymorphism of the S-DNA when a canonical B-DNA is stretched under different pulling protocols and provide a fundamental molecular understanding of the DNA stretching mechanism. Extensive all atom molecular dynamics…
It is a standard exercise in mechanical engineering to infer the external forces and torques on a body from its static shape and known elastic properties. Here we apply this kind of analysis to distorted double-helical DNA in complexes with…
A mesoscopic model for heterogeneous DNA denaturation is developed in the framework of the path integral formalism. The base pair stretchings are treated as one-dimensional, time dependent paths contributing to the partition function. The…
We present a novel technique of sampling the configurations of helical proteins. Assuming knowledge of native secondary structure, we employ assembly rules gathered from a database of existing structures to enumerate the geometrically…
Mechanical properties of nucleic acids play an important role in many biological processes which often involve physical deformations of these molecules. At sufficiently long length scales (say above $\sim 20-30$ base pairs) the mechanics of…
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…