Related papers: Modeling DNA loops using the theory of elasticity
By exploring a recent model [Palmeri, J., M. Manghi, and N. Destainville. 2007. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99:088103] where DNA bending elasticity, described by the wormlike chain model, is coupled to base-pair denaturation, we demonstrate that small…
This paper focuses on mechanical aspects of chromatin biological functioning. Within a basic geometric modeling of the chromatin assembly, we give for the first time the complete set of elastic constants (twist and bend persistence lengths,…
The structure and dynamics of a typical biological system are complex due to strong and inhomogeneous interactions between its constituents. The investigation of such systems with classical mathematical tools, such as differential equations…
A model for the motion of ring-shaped DNA in a gel is introduced and studied by numerical simulations and a mean-field approximation. The ring motion is mediated by finger-shaped loops (hernias) that move in an amoeba-like fashion around…
We study the electronic properties of DNA by way of a tight-binding model applied to four particular DNA sequences. The charge transfer properties are presented in terms of localisation lengths, crudely speaking the length over which…
Predicting protein functional characteristics from structure remains a central problem in protein science, with broad implications from understanding the mechanisms of disease to designing novel therapeutics. Unfortunately, current machine…
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…
The elastic properties of semiflexible polymers are of great importance in biology. There are experiments on biopolymers like double stranded DNA, which twist and stretch single molecules to probe their elastic properties. It is known that…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
In this work we propose a model for gene expression based on the theory of random dynamical systems (RDS) and show that it has a "modularity property" in the following sense: given any collection of genes that are linked in a…
We develop a continuum elastic approach to examining the bending mechanics of semiflexible filaments with a local internal degree of freedom that couples to the bending modulus. We apply this model to study the nonlinear mechanics of a…
We had combined the Neukirch-Marko model that describes the extension, torque and supercoiling in single, stretched and twisted DNA of infinite contour length, with a form of the free energy suggested by Sinha and Samuels to describe short…
The competition between toroidal and rod-like conformations as possible ground states for DNA condensation is studied as a function of the stiffness, the length of the DNA and the form of the long-range interactions between neighboring…
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…
Here we derive and experimentally test a free energy functional that captures the adhesion of DNA-coated emulsion droplets. Generalizing previous approaches, the theory combines important energetic and entropic effects of microscopic DNA…
We reinvestigate the model originally studied by Neukirch and Marko that describes the extension, torque and supercoiling in single, stretched and twisted DNA molecules, which consists of a mixture of extended and supercoiled state, using…
Electronic properties of DNA are believed to play a crucial role in many phenomena in living organisms, for example the location of DNA lesions by base excision repair (BER) glycosylases and the regulation of tumor-suppressor genes such as…
We study three-dimensional deformations of thin inextensible elastic rods with non-vanishing spontaneous curvature and torsion. In addition to the usual description in terms of curvature and torsion which considers only the configuration of…
The structural flexibility of nucleic acids plays a key role in many fundamental life processes, such as gene replication and expression, DNA-protein recognition, and gene regulation. To obtain a thorough understanding of nucleic acid…
DNA supercoiling plays an important role in a variety of cellular processes. The torsional stress related with supercoiling may be also involved in gene regulation through the local structure and dynamics of the double helix. To check this…