Related papers: When Knots are Plectonemes
We investigate theoretically the translocation of structured RNA/DNA molecules through narrow pores which allow single but not double strands to pass. The unzipping of basepaired regions within the molecules presents significant kinetic…
Inspired by its central role in many biological processes, the transport of biopolymers across nanoscale pores is at the heart of a single-molecule sensing technology aimed at nucleic acid and protein sequencing, as well as biomarker…
A multiscale approach is used to simulate the translocation of DNA through a nanopore. Within this scheme, the interactions of the molecule with the surrounding fluid (solvent) are explicitly taken into account. By generating polymers of…
DNA supercoils are generated in genome regulation processes such as transcription and replication, and provide mechanical feedback to such processes. Under tension, DNA supercoil can present a coexistence state of plectonemic (P) and…
Polymer translocation through a nanopore in a membrane investigated theoretically. Recent experiments on voltage-driven DNA and RNA translocations through a nanopore indicate that the size and geometry of the pore are important factors in…
The threading of a polymer chain through a small pore is a classic problem in polymer dynamics and underlies nanopore sensing technology. However important experimental aspects of the polymer motion in a solid-state nanopore, such as an…
The transport of polymers with folded configurations across membrane pores is investigated theoretically by analyzing simple discrete stochastic models. The translocation dynamics is viewed as a sequence of two events: motion of the folded…
DNA unzipping by nanopore translocation has implications in diverse contexts, from polymer physics to single-molecule manipulation to DNA-enzyme interactions in biological systems. Here we use molecular dynamics simulations and a…
Plectonemes are intertwined helically looped domains which form when a DNA molecule is supercoiled, i.e. over- or under-wounded. They are ubiquitous in cellular DNA and their physical properties have attracted significant interest both from…
The advent of solid state nanodevices allows for interrogating the physico-chemical properties of a polyelectrolyte chain by electrophoretically driving it through a nanopore. Salient dynamical aspects of the translocation process have been…
Polymer translocation is a promising strategy for the next-generation DNA sequencing technologies. The use of biological and synthetic nano-pores, however, still suffers from serious drawbacks. In particular, the width of the membrane layer…
The translocation of a macromolecule through a nanometer-sized pore is an interesting process with important applications in the development of biosensors for single--molecule analysis and in drug delivery and gene therapy. We have carried…
DNA translocation through nanopores is one of the most promising strategies for the next-generation sequencing technologies. Most part of experimental and numerical works has focused on polymer translocation biased by electrophoresis, where…
Recent experiments demonstrated that knots in single DNA strands can be formed by hydrodynamic compression in a nanochannel. In this letter, we further elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms by carrying out a compression experiment…
A stretched DNA molecule which is also under- or overwound, undergoes a buckling transition forming intertwined looped domains called plectonemes. Here we develop a simple theory that extends the two-phase model of stretched supercoiled…
In mechanical manipulation experiments, a single DNA molecule overwound at constant force undergoes a discontinuous drop in extension as it buckles and forms a superhelical loop (a plectoneme). Further overwinding the DNA, we observe an…
We investigate the dynamics of DNA translocation through a nanopore using 2D Langevin dynamics simulations, focusing on the dependence of the translocation dynamics on the details of DNA sequences. The DNA molecules studied in this work are…
Biological information is not only stored in the digital chemical sequence of double helical DNA, but is also encoded in the mechanical properties of the DNA strands, which can influence biochemical processes involving its readout. For…
The effect of sequence heterogeneity on polynucleotide translocation across a pore and on simple models of molecular motors such as helicases, DNA polymerase/exonuclease and RNA polymerase is studied in detail. Pore translocation of RNA or…
We investigate the dynamics of DNA translocation through a nanopore driven by an external force using Langevin dynamics simulations in two dimensions (2D) to study how the translocation dynamics depend on the details of the DNA sequences.…