Related papers: Stretching DNA: Role of electrostatic interaction
The force-extension relation for a semi-flexible polymer such as DNA confined in a nanoslit is investigated and it is found that both the effective persistence length and the form of the force-extension relation change as the chain goes…
A simple model of DNA based on two interacting polymers has been used to study the unzipping of a double stranded DNA subjected to a periodic force. We propose a dynamical transition, where without changing the physiological condition, it…
The temperature dependence of DNA flexibility is studied in the presence of stretching and unzipping forces. Two classes of models are considered. In one case the origin of elasticity is entropic due to the polymeric correlations, and in…
We predict various detectable mechanical responses to the presence of local DNA defects which are defined as short DNA segments exhibiting mechanical properties obviously different from the 50 nm persistence length based semiflexible…
The strength of the spin-orbit interaction relevant to transport in a low dimensional structure depends critically on the relative geometrical arrangement of current carrying orbitals. Recent tight-binding orbital models for spin transport…
We use optical tweezers to perform stretching experiments on DNA molecules when interacting with the drugs daunomycin and ethidium bromide, which intercalate the DNA molecule. These experiments are performed in the low-force regime from…
The mechanism allowing a protein to search of a target sequence on DNA is currently described as an intermittent process composed of 3D diffusion in bulk and 1D diffusion along the DNA molecule. Due to the relevant charge of protein and…
We probe the electrostatic cost associated with the approach phase of DNA translocation events. Within an analytical theory at the Debye-Huckel level, we calculate the electrostatic free energy of a rigid DNA molecule interacting with a…
A strict method is used to calculate the current-voltage characteristics of a double-stranded DNA. A more reliable model considering the electrostatic potential drop along an individual DNA molecular wire between the contacts is considered…
We propose a generic model of driven DNA under the influence of an oscillatory force of amplitude $F$ and frequency $\nu$ and show the existence of a dynamical transition for a chain of finite length. We find that the area of the hysteresis…
The mechanical model based on beads and springs, which we recently proposed to study non-specific DNA-protein interactions [J. Chem. Phys. 130, 015103 (2009)], was improved by describing proteins as sets of interconnected beads instead of…
DNA and other biopolymers differ from classical polymers due to their torsional stiffness. This property changes the statistical character of their conformations under tension from a classical random walk to a problem we call the `torsional…
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…
Charge diffusion through desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a physico-chemical phenomenon that on the one hand is being explored for technological purposes, on the other hand is applied by nature for various informational processes in life.…
It has been recently shown that randomly charged surfaces can exhibit long range electrostatic interactions even when they are net neutral. These forces depend on the specific realization of charge disorder and thus exhibit sample to sample…
We derive formulae for the electrostatic interaction between two long, rigid macromolecules that may have arbitrary surface charge patterns and cross at an arbitrary interaxial angle. We calculate the dependence of the interaction energy on…
A theoretical framework for evaluating the approximate energy and dynamic properties associated with the folding of DNA into nucleosomes and chromatin is presented. For this purpose experimentally determined elastic constants of linear DNA…
The macroscopic curvature induced in double helical B-DNA by regularly repeated adenine tracts (A-tracts) is a long known, but still unexplained phenomenon. This effect plays a key role in DNA studies because it is unique in the amount and…
We present an extensive theoretical investigation of the mechanical unzipping of double-stranded DNA under the influence of an applied force. In the limit of long polymers, there is a thermodynamic unzipping transition at a critical force…
We study the effects of the sequence on the propagation of nonlinear excitations in simple models of DNA, and how those effects are modified by noise. Starting from previous results on soliton dynamics on lattices defined by aperiodic…