Related papers: Attraction between DNA molecules mediated by multi…
Electrostatics plays a key role in biomolecular assembly. Oppositely charged biomolecules, for instance, can co-assembled into functional units, such as DNA and histone proteins into nucleosomes and actin-binding protein complexes into…
Multivalent interactions between deformable mesoscopic units are ubiquitous in biology, where membrane macromolecules mediate the interactions between neighbouring living cells and between cells and solid substrates. Lately, analogous…
The rapid worldwide spread of severe viral infections, often involving novel modifications of viruses, poses major challenges to our health care systems. This means that tools that can efficiently and specifically diagnose viruses are much…
We study the attractive interactions between rod-like charged polymers in solution that appear in the presence of multi-valence counterions. The counterions condensed to the rods exhibit both a strong transversal polarization and a…
A theory is presented for the binding of small molecules such as surfactants to semiflexible polymers. The persistence length is assumed to be large compared to the monomer size but much smaller than the total chain length. Such polymers…
Single T4-DNA molecules were confined in rectangular-shaped channels with a depth of 300 nm and a width in the range 150-300 nm casted in a poly(dimethylsiloxane) nanofluidic chip. The extensions of the DNA molecules were measured with…
Electrostatic properties and stability of charged virus-like nano-shells are examined in ionic solutions with monovalent and multivalent ions. A theoretical model based on a thin charged spherical shell and multivalent ions within the…
We propose a mean-field analytical model to account for the observed asymmetry in the ability to form long-range attraction by the negatively charged colloidal particles and not their equivalently charged positive counterpart. We conjecture…
Debates about conductivity of DNAs have been recently renewed due to contradictory results of direct measurements by use of electrical contacts to molecules. In several works it was discovered that double-stranded (ds)DNAs are conductors:…
The effect of electrostatic interactions on the stretching of DNA is investigated using a simple worm like chain model. In the limit of small force there are large conformational fluctuations which are treated using a self-consistent…
Phase separation in biomolecular mixtures can result from multiple physical interactions, which may act either complementarily or antagonistically. In the case of protein-nucleic acid mixtures, charge plays a key role but can have…
Cononsolvency is a phenomenon for which the solubility of a macromolecule decreases or even vanishes in the mixture of two good solvents. Although it has been widely applied in physicochemical, green chemical and pharmaceutical industry,…
Multivalent particles bind to targets via many independent ligand-receptor bonding interactions. This microscopic design spans length scales in both synthetic and biological systems. Classic examples include interactions between cells,…
The attractive gravitational force between two electrons in superconductors is deduced from the Eddington-Dirac large number relation, together with Beck and Mackey electromagnetic model of vacuum energy in superconductors. This force is…
Simple expressions for the bending and the base-stacking energy of double-stranded semiflexible biopolymers (such as DNA and actin) are derived. The distribution of the folding angle between the two strands is obtained by solving a…
Motivated by the wide ranging experimental results on the conductivity of DNA, we have investigated extraordinary configurations and chemical environments in which DNA might become a true molecular wire, perticularly from enhanced…
Screening of a strongly charged macroion by multivalent counterions is considered. It is shown that counterions form a strongly correlated liquid at the surface of the macroion. Cohesive energy of this liquid leads to additional attraction…
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.…
Recent theoretical predictions on DNA mechanical separation induced by pulling forces are numerically tested within a model in which self-avoidance for DNA strands is fully taken into account. DNA strands are described by interacting pairs…
We investigate the impact of dielectric boundary forces on the translocation process of charged rigid DNA segments through solid neutral nanopores. We assess the electrostatic contribution to the translocation free energy barrier of a model…