Related papers: Statistical models for nucleic acids
In this paper we consider the anharmonic corrections to the anisotropic elastic rod model for DNA. Our model accounts for the difference between the bending energies of positive and negative rolls, which comes from the asymmetric structure…
In this paper, we explore the feasibility of using coarse-grained models to simulate the self-assembly of DNA nanostructures. We introduce a simple model of DNA where each nucleotide is represented by two interaction sites corresponding to…
We show that a mesoscale model, with a minimal number of parameters, can well describe the thermomechanical and mechanochemical behavior of homogeneous DNA at thermal equilibrium under tension and torque. We predict critical temperatures…
Homologous gene shuffling between DNA promotes genetic diversity and is an important pathway for DNA repair. For this to occur, homologous genes need to find and recognize each other. However, despite its central role in homologous…
Periodic structures of phases with orientational order of molecules, but homogenous electron density distribution: a short pitch cholesteric, blue phase and twist-bend nematic phase, were probed by a resonant soft x-ray scattering (RSoXS)…
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,…
Recent experimental data indicate that the elastic wormlike rod model of DNA that works well on long length scales may break down on shorter scales relevant to biology. According to Noy and Golestanian (Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 228101, 2012)…
Different numerical mappings of the DNA sequences have been studied using a new cluster-scaling method and the well known spectral methods. It is shown, in particular, that the nucleotide sequences in DNA molecules have robust…
Single molecule experiments on B-DNA stretching have revealed one or two structural transitions, when increasing the external force. They are characterized by a sudden increase of DNA contour length and a decrease of the bending rigidity.…
The mechanical model based on beads and springs, which we recently proposed to study non-specific DNA-protein interactions [J. Chem. Phys. 130, 015103 (2009)], was improved by describing proteins as sets of interconnected beads instead of…
Clarification of the detailed mechanisms involved in the DNA polymorphism is an important challenge for computational molecular biophysics. This paper reports about reversible A/B transitions in DNA observed in silico in a simulated…
A growing number of RNA sequences are now known to have distributions of multiple stable sequences. Recent algorithms use the list of nucleotides in a sequence and auxiliary experimental data to predict such distributions. Although the…
The local opening of DNA is an intriguing phenomenon from a statistical physics point of view, but is also essential for its biological function. For instance, the transcription and replication of our genetic code can not take place without…
As a key molecule of Life, Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the focus of numbers of investigations with the help of biological, chemical and physical techniques. From a physical point of view, both experimental and theoretical works have…
The kinetic folding of RNA sequences into secondary structures is modeled as a complex adaptive system, the components of which are possible RNA structural rearrangements (SRs) and their associated bases and base pairs. RNA bases and base…
We perform a statistical study of the distances between successive occurrencies of a given dinucleotide in the DNA sequence for a number of organisms of different complexity. Our analysis highlights peculiar features of the dinucleotide CG…
It is shown that the nucleotide sequences in DNA molecules have cluster-scaling properties (discovered for the first time in turbulent processes: Sreenivasan and Bershadskii, 2006, J. Stat. Phys., 125, 1141-1153.). These properties are…
Dynamics of the polymorphic A<->B transitions in DNA is compared for two polypurine sequences, poly(dA).poly(dT) and poly(dG).poly(dC), long known to exhibit contrasting properties in experiments. In free molecular dynamics simulations…
The emerging field of hybrid DNA - protein nanotechnology brings with it the potential for many novel materials which combine the addressability of DNA nanotechnology with versatility of protein interactions. However, the design and…
The Watson-Crick complementary properties of DNA make DNA a useful tool for the self-assembly of various target complexes. Concepts from graph theory can be used to model the self-assembling process in which the vertices of the graph…