Related papers: Torsional fluctuations in columnar DNA assemblies
The interplay between bending of the molecule axis and appearance of disruptions in circular DNA molecules, with $\sim 100$ base pairs, is addressed. Three minicircles with different radii and almost equal content of AT and GC pairs are…
Nucleic acids physical properties have been investigated by theoretical methods based both on fully atomistic representations and on coarse grained models, e.g. the worm-like-chain, taken from polymer physics. In this article, I present an…
The thermodynamic properties of DNA circular molecules are investigated by a new path integral computational method which treats in the real space the fundamental forces stabilizing the molecule. The base pair and stacking contributions to…
We construct a theoretical model for the dynamics of a microscale colloidal particle, modeled as an interval, moving horizontally on a DNA-coated surface, modelled as a line coated with springs that can stick to the interval. Averaging over…
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 develop further a statistical model coupling denaturation and chain conformations in DNA (Palmeri J, Manghi M and Destainville N 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 088103). Our Discrete Helical Wormlike Chain model takes explicitly into account…
For biologically relevant macromolecules such as intrinsically disordered proteins, internal degrees of freedom that allow for shape changes have a large influence on both the motion and function of the compound. A detailed understanding of…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
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…
Plectonemes are intertwined helically looped domains which form when a DNA molecule is supercoiled, i.e. over- or under-wounded. They are ubiquitous in cellular DNA and their physical properties have attracted significant interest both from…
This paper extends on a recent work where it was shown that forces dependent on the helical structure may cause two DNA molecules to spontaneously braid [R. Cortini et Al, Biophys. J. 101, 875 (2011)]. Here, bending fluctuations of DNA…
The role of thermal pressure fluctuations in the ejection of tightly packaged DNA from protein capsid shells is discussed in a model calculation. At equilibrium before ejection we assume the DNA is folded many times into a bundle of…
The theory of mesoscopic fluctuations is applied to inhomogeneous solids consisting of chaotically distributed regions with different crystalline structure. This approach makes it possible to describe statistical properties of such mixture…
We use a coarse-grained model of DNA-functionalized particles to understand the role of DNA chain length on their self-assembly. We find that the increasing chain length for a given particle size decreases the propensity to form ordered…
We examine the conformations of a model for a short segment of closed DNA. The molecule is represented as a cylindrically symmetric elastic rod with a constraint corresponding to a specification of the linking number. We obtain analytic…
We study numerically the mechanical stability and elasticity properties of duplex DNA molecules within the frame of a network model incorporating microscopic degrees of freedom related with the arrangement of the base pairs. We pay special…
Polymer composites are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, owing to their emergent desirable mechanical properties not attainable in single-species systems. At the same time, polymer topology has been shown to play a key role in…
We investigate the orientational order of transverse polarization vectors of long columns of nucleosomal core particles and their coupling to positional order in high density mesophases discovered recently. Inhomogeneous polar ordering of…
How condensed-matter simulations depend on the number of molecules being simulated ($N$) is sometimes itself a valuable piece of information. Liquid crystals provide a case in point. Light scattering and $2d$-IR experiments on…
We use X-ray tomography to investigate the translational and rotational dynamical heterogeneities of a three dimensional hard ellipsoids granular packing driven by oscillatory shear. We find that particles which translate quickly form…