Related papers: Comment on "Monomer Dynamics in Double- and Single…
Mechanical properties of DNA, in particular their stretch dependent extension and their loop formation characteristics, have been recognized as an effective probe for understanding the possible biochemical role played by them in a living…
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 Rouse (J. Chem. Phys. 21, 1272 (1953)) and Zimm (J. Chem. Phys. 24}, 269 (1956)) treatments of the dynamics of a polymer chain are shown to contain a fundamental mathematical error, which causes them to lose the zero-relaxation-rate,…
We investigate theoretically the physics of diffusion-limited intramolecular polymer reactions. The present work completes and goes beyond a previous study [Nat. Chem. 4, 268 (2012)] that showed that the distribution of the polymer…
DNA supercoiling, the under or overwinding of DNA, is a key physical mechanism both participating to compaction of bacterial genomes and making genomic sequences adopt various structural forms. DNA supercoiling may lead to the formation of…
We study the elastic response of a worm-like polymer chain with reversible kink-like structural defects. This is a generic model for (a) the double-stranded DNA with sharp bends induced by binding of certain proteins, and (b) effects of…
Previous numerical investigations of an one-dimensional DNA model with an extended modified coupling constant by transcripting enzyme are integrated to longer time and demonstrated explicitly the trapping of breathers by DNA chains with…
We report results of molecular-dynamics simulations for a glassy polymer melt consisting of short, linear bead-spring chains. It was shown in previous work that this onset of the glassy slowing down is compatible with the predictions of the…
A detailed description of the conformational plasticity of double stranded DNA (ds) is a necessary framework for understanding protein-DNA interactions. Until now, however structure and kinetics of the transition from the basic conformation…
We study the compression and extension dynamics of a DNA-like polymer interacting with non-DNA binding and DNA-binding proteins, by means of computer simulations. The geometry we consider is inspired by recent experiments probing the…
During the life cycle of bacterial cells the non-mixing of the two ring-shaped daughter genomes is an important prerequisite for the cell division process. Mimicking the environments inside highly crowded biological cells, we study the…
We scrutinize the effect of polyvalent ions on polymer-DNA interactions. We extend a recently developed test charge theory to the case of a stiff polymer interacting with a DNA molecule in an electrolyte mixture. The theory accounts for…
The competition between reptation and Rouse Dynamics is incorporated in the Rubinstein-Duke model for polymer motion by extending it with sideways motions, which cross barriers and create or annihilate hernias. Using the Density-Matrix…
The accurate knowledge of the elastic properties of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) is key to characterize the thermodynamics of molecular reactions that are studied by force spectroscopy methods where DNA is mechanically unfolded. Examples…
Star polymers can exhibit a heterogeneous dynamical behavior due to their internal structure. In this work we employ atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to study translational motion in non-entangled polystyrene and poly(ethylene…
We study theoretically the entropic elasticity of a semi-flexible polymer, such as DNA, confined to two dimensions. Using the worm-like-chain model we obtain an exact analytical expression for the partition function of the polymer pulled at…
A simple model of a circularly closed dsDNA in a poor solvent is considered as an example of a semi-flexible polymer with self-attraction. To find the ground states, the conformational energy is computed as a sum of the bending and…
Nonlinear dynamics of two biomolecules is studied. These are a microtubule and DNA molecule. Two mathematical procedures are explained, yielding to three kinds of solitary waves moving through the systems. These waves are kinks, modulated…
A phenomenological model based on the three-dimensional theory of nonlinear elasticity is developed to describe the phenomenon of overstretching in the force-extension curve for dsDNA. By using the concept of a material with multiple…
We present a detailed kinetic model for the Polymerase Chain Reaction, and model the probability of replication in terms of the physical parameters of the problem. Applying the theory of branching processes, we show the existance of a new…