Related papers: Effective interaction between helical bio-molecule…
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…
The hydrogen peroxide is present in the living cell at small concentrations that increase under the action of the heavy ion beams in the process of anticancer therapy. The interactions of hydrogen peroxide with DNA, proteins and other…
Gene regulation is one of the most important fundamental biological processes in living cells. It involves multiple protein molecules that locate specific sites on DNA and assemble gene initiation or gene repression multi-molecular…
We studied the electrical conductivity of DNA molecules with conducting atomic force microscopy as a function of the chemical nature of the substrate surfaces, the nature of the electrical contact, and the number of DNA molecules (from a…
As a key molecule of Life, Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the focus of numbers of investigations with the help of biological, chemical and physical techniques. From a physical point of view, both experimental and theoretical works have…
An exact, analytic solution for a simple electrostatic model applicable to biomolecular recognition is presented. In the model, a layer of high dielectric constant material (representative of the solvent, water) whose thickness may vary…
Because micro-ions accumulate around highly charged colloidal particles in electrolyte solutions, the relevant parameter to compute their interactions is not the bare charge, but an effective (or renormalized) quantity, whose value is…
Many proteins interact with and deform double-stranded DNA in cells. Single-molecule experiments have studied the elasticity of DNA with helix-deforming proteins, including proteins that bend DNA. These experiments increase the need for…
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…
The folding of biological macromolecules is a fundamental process of which we lack a full comprehension. Mostly studied in proteins and RNA, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) also folds, at physiological salt conditions, by forming non-specific…
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…
In solution, electrically like-charged particles can experience a strong and long-ranged attraction that leads to the formation of stable, slowly reorganizing clusters. The attractive force underpinning this spontaneous organization process…
The DNA double helix is a polyanionic macromolecule that in water solutions is neutralized by metal ions (counterions). The property of the counterions to stabilize the water network (positive hydration) or to make it friable (negative…
By resorting to the thick-chain model we discuss how the stretching response of a polymer is influenced by the self-avoidance entailed by its finite thickness. The characterization of the force versus extension curve for a thick chain is…
We consider voltage-driving DNA translocation through a nanopore in the present study. By assuming the DNA is coaxial with the cylindrical nanopore, a hydrodynamic model for determining effective force on a single DNA molecule in a nanopore…
Molecular recognition between two double stranded (ds) DNA with homologous sequences may not seem compatible with the B-DNA structure because the sequence information is hidden when it is used for joining the two strands. Nevertheless, it…
In the present paper we address the general problem of selective electrodynamic interactions between DNA and protein, which is motivated by decades of theoretical study and our very recent experimental findings (M. Lechelon et al,…
The histone-DNA interaction in the nucleosome is a fundamental mechanism of genomic compaction and regulation, which remains largely unkown despite a growing structural knowledge of the complex. Here, we propose a framework for the…
Structuring of DNA counterions around the double helix has been studied by the molecular dynamics method. A DNA dodecamer d(CGCGAATTCGCG) in water solution with the alkali metal counterions Na$^{+}$, K$^{+}$, and Cs$^{+}$ has been…
Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ~((RH)^1/2)/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the…