Related papers: Helicoidal model for DNA opening
The mechanical properties of DNA are typically described by elastic theories with purely local couplings (on-site models). We discuss and analyze coarse-grained (oxDNA) and all-atom simulations, which indicate that in DNA distal sites are…
How is reliable physiological function maintained in cells despite considerable variability in the values of key parameters of multiple interacting processes that govern that function? Here we use the classic Hodgkin-Huxley formulation of…
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…
Atomic Force Microscopy analysis is employed to study the geometrical and topological properties of $3000$kbp DNA molecules fixed in mica substrates with $MgCl_{2}$. We found that the aggregates on the substrate surface for certain salt…
The classical Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) point-neuron model of action potential generation is four-dimensional. It consists of four ordinary differential equations describing the dynamics of the membrane potential and three gating variables…
We formulate a kinetic model of DNA replication that quantitatively describes recent results on DNA replication in the in vitro system of Xenopus laevis prior to the mid-blastula transition. The model describes well a large amount of…
These lectures will address two questions. Is there a simple variational principle underlying the existence of secondary motifs in the native state of proteins? Is there a general approach which can qualitatively capture the salient…
To study the elastic properties of rod-like DNA nanostructures, we perform long simulations of these structure using the oxDNA coarse-grained model. By analysing the fluctuations in these trajectories we obtain estimates of the bend and…
The fluidic behavior of water at the micro/nano scale is studied by using of single DNA molecules as a model system. Stable curved DNA patterns with spans about one micron were generated by using of water flows, and observed by Atomic Force…
In previous work, the dynamics of the elastic rod was recast in a Lax pair formulation, with fiducial arc length s and time t as continuous independent variables. However, the solution of these equations cannot apply directly to a system…
Complementary DNA strands in solution reliably hybridize to form stable duplexes. We study the kinetics of the hybridization process and the mechanisms by which two initially isolated strands come together to form a stable double helix. We…
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…
We study the dynamics of hydration water/protein association in folded proteins, using lysozyme and myoglobin as examples. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations are performed to identify underlying mechanisms of the dynamical transition…
We present a general framework to study the thermodynamic denaturation of double-stranded DNA under superhelical stress. We report calculations of position- and size-dependent opening probabilities for bubbles along the sequence. Our…
The folding of a polypeptide is an example of the cooperative effects of the amino-acid residues. Of recent interest is how a secondary structure, such as a helix, spontaneously forms during the collapse of a peptide from an initial…
Gene expression and regulation rely on an apparently finely tuned set of reactions between some proteins and DNA. Such DNA-binding proteins have to find specific sequences on very long DNA molecules and they mostly do so in absence of any…
Several controversial issues concerning the packing of linear DNA in bacteriophages and globules are discussed. Exact relations for the osmotic pressure, capsid pressure and loading force are derived in terms of the hole size inside phages…
Nanochannels provide means for detailed experiments on the effect of confinement on biomacromolecules, such as DNA. We here introduce a model for the complete unfolding of DNA from the circular to linear configuration. Two main ingredients…
Due to its polyionic character the DNA double helix is stable and biologically active only in salty aqueous media where its charge is compensated by solvent counterions. Monovalent metal ions are ubiquitous in DNA environment and they are…
We use a recently developed coarse-grained model for DNA to study kissing complexes formed by hybridization of complementary hairpin loops. The binding of the loops is topologically constrained because their linking number must remain…