Related papers: Forces During Bacteriophage DNA Packaging and Ejec…
We present a numerical study of the effect of knotting on the ejection of flexible and semiflexible polymers from a spherical, virus-like capsid. The polymer ejection rate is primarily controlled by the knot, which moves to the hole in the…
We have studied the separation of a double stranded DNA (dsDNA), which is driven either by the temperature or force. By monitoring the probability of opening of entire base pairs along the chain, we show that the opening of a dsDNA depends…
The volume occupied by unconstrained bacterial DNA in physiological solutions exceeds 1000 times the volume of the cell. Still, it is confined to a well defined region of the cell called the nucleoid, which occupies only a fraction of the…
A solid-state nanopore can electrophoretically capture a DNA molecule and pull it through in a folded configuration. The resulting ionic current signal indicates where along its length the DNA was captured. A statistical study using an 8 nm…
We present a self-contained theory for the mechanical response of DNA in single molecule experiments. Our model is based on a 1D continuum description of the DNA molecule and accounts both for its elasticity and for DNA-DNA electrostatic…
Biological condensates are assemblies of proteins and nucleic acids that form membraneless compartments in cells and play essential roles in cellular functions. In many cases they exhibit the physical properties of liquid droplets that…
Time-resolved single-molecule biophysical experiments yield data that contain a wealth of dynamic information, in addition to the equilibrium distributions derived from histograms of the time series. In typical force spectroscopic setups…
We present Brownian dynamics simulations of the facilitated diffusion of a protein, modelled as a sphere with a binding site on its surface, along DNA, modelled as a semi-flexible polymer. We consider both the effect of DNA organisation in…
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…
The packaging of genetic material within a protein shell, called the capsid, marks a pivotal step in the life cycle of numerous single-stranded RNA viruses. Understanding how hundreds, or even thousands, of proteins assemble around the…
DNA supercoiling is central to many fundamental processes of living organisms. Its average level along the chromosome and over time reflects the dynamic equilibrium of opposite activities of topoisomerases, which are required to relax…
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…
The electrical properties of DNA molecules are investigated by charge injection and electric force microscopy experiments. Prior to injection, DNA molecules exhibit a weak positively charged state. We probe the electrical behaviour of DNA…
In vivo configurations of dsDNA of bacteriophage viruses in a capsid are known to form hexagonal chromonic liquid crystal phases. This article studies the liquid crystal ordering of viral dsDNA in an icosahedral capsid, combining the…
The effective DNA-DNA interaction force is calculated by computer simulations with explicit tetravalent counterions and monovalent salt. For overcharged DNA molecules, the interaction force shows a double-minimum structure. The positions…
The unconstrained genomic DNA of bacteria forms a coil, which volume exceeds 1000 times the volume of the cell. Since prokaryotes lack a membrane-bound nucleus, in sharp contrast with eukaryotes, the DNA may consequently be expected to…
Recent experimental and theoretical approaches have attempted to quantify the physical organization (compaction and geometry) of the bacterial chromosome with its complement of proteins (the nucleoid). The genomic DNA exists in a complex…
This work addresses the question of the interplay of DNA demixing and supercoiling in bacterial cells. Demixing of DNA from other globular macromolecules results from the overall repulsion between all components of the system and leads to…
The flexibility and the extension along the direction of the force are shown to be related to the bubble number fluctuation and the average number of bubbles respectively, when the strands of the DNA are subjected to a force along the same…
The problem of inhibiting viral DNA ejection from bacteriophages by multivalent counterions, specifically Mg$^{+2}$ counterions, is studied. Experimentally, it is known that MgSO$_4$ salt has a strong and non-monotonic effect on the amount…