Related papers: DNA Unzipping Transition
Renaturation of complementary single strands of DNA is one of the important processes that requires better understanding in the view of molecular biology and biological physics. Here we develop a stochastic dynamical model on the DNA…
A DNA-protein complex modelled by a semiflexible chain and an attractive spherical core is studied in the situation when an external stretching force is acting on one end monomer of the chain while the other end monomer is kept fixed in…
The melting transition of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), whereby the strands of the double helix structure completely separate at a certain temperature, has been characterized using neutron scattering. A Bragg peak from B-form fibre DNA has…
We use a statistical mechanical model to study nonthermal denaturation of DNA in the presence of protein-mediated loops. We find that looping proteins which randomly link DNA bases located at a distance along the chain could cause a…
We generalize the Poland-Scheraga model to consider DNA denaturation in the presence of an external stretching force. We demonstrate the existence of a force-induced DNA denaturation transition and obtain the temperature-force phase…
Single-molecule experiments provide new insights into biological processes hitherto not accessible by measurements performed on bulk systems. We report on a study of the kinetics of a triple-branch DNA molecule with four conformational…
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…
A barrier penetration model has been proposed to explain the spontaneous melting of the DNA oligomers into two separate single strands whereas the partially melted intermediate states are shown to be the bound state solution of the same…
DNA melting and hybridization is a fundamental biological process as well as a crucial step in many modern biotechnology applications. DNA confined on surfaces exhibits different behavior from that in free solutions. The system of…
Locations of DNA replication initiation in prokaryotes, called "origins of replication", are well-characterized. However, a mechanistic understanding of the sequence-dependence of the local unzipping of double-stranded DNA, the first step…
Near the melting transition the bending elastic constant, $\kappa$, an emergent property of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), is shown not to follow the rod-like scaling for small length $N$. The reduction in $\kappa$ with temperature is…
All stem cell fate transitions, including the metabolic reprogramming of stem cells and the somatic reprogramming of fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells, can be understood from a unified theoretical model of cell fates. Each cell fate…
A unifying theory of the denaturation transition of DNA, driven by temperature T or induced by an external mechanical torque Gamma is presented. Our model couples the hydrogen-bond opening and the untwisting of the helicoidal molecular…
We predict a novel temperature-driven phase transition of DNA below the melting transition. The additional, intermediate phase exists for repetitive sequences, when the two strands have different lengths. In this phase, the excess bases of…
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…
An important step in transcription of a DNA base sequence to a protein is the initiation from the exact starting point, called promoter region. We propose a physical mechanism for identification of the promoter region, which relies on a new…
Under an external field a double-stranded peptide chain can separate in a fragile or ductile transition. It is usually believed that these two regimes are driven either by chemical and thermal fields, or through non-local mechanical…
We study the force-induced unfolding of random disordered RNA or single-stranded DNA polymers. The system undergoes a second order phase transition from a collapsed globular phase at low forces to an extensive necklace phase with a…
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…
The folding angle distribution of stretched and negatively supercoiled DNA double-helix is investigated based on a theoretical model we proposed earlier [H. Zhou et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4560 (1999)]. It is shown that pulling can…