相关论文: Force steps during viral DNA packaging ?
The DNA molecule, apart from carrying the genetic information, plays a crucial role in a variety of biological processes and find applications in drug design, nanotechnology and nanoelectronics. The molecule undergoes significant structural…
The conjunction of insights from structural biology, solution biochemistry, genetics and single molecule biophysics has provided a renewed impetus for the construction of quantitative models of biological processes. One area that has been a…
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 mechanical properties of DNA play a critical role in many biological functions. For example, DNA packing in viruses involves confining the viral genome in a volume (the viral capsid) with dimensions that are comparable to the DNA…
The transport of macromolecules, such as DNA, through the cytoskeleton is critical to wide-ranging cellular processes from cytoplasmic streaming to transcription. The rigidity and steric hindrances imparted by the network of filaments…
Many cell functions are accomplished thanks to intracellular transport mechanisms of macromolecules along filaments. Molecular motors such as dynein or kinesin are proteins playing a primary role in these processes. The behavior of such…
Organization and maintenance of the chromosomal DNA in living cells strongly depends on the DNA interactions with a plethora of DNA-binding proteins. Single-molecule studies show that formation of nucleoprotein complexes on DNA by such…
Biological functions in each animal cell depend on coordinated operations of a wide variety of molecular motors. Some of the these motors transport cargo to their respective destinations whereas some others are mobile workshops which…
DNA-interacting proteins have roles multiple processes, many operating as molecular machines which undergo dynamic metastable transitions to bring about their biological function. To fully understand this molecular heterogeneity, DNA and…
Molecular motor proteins form the basis of cellular dynamics. Recently, notable efforts have led to the creation of their DNA-based mimics, which can carry out complex nanoscale motion. However, such functional analogues have not yet been…
We propose a simple model for the kinetics of packaging of viral DNA in to a capsid against an external force trying to prevent it. The model leads to a Butler-Volmer type dependence of the rate of packaging on the pulling force F.
We characterize the equilibrium thermodynamics of a thick polymer confined in a spherical region of space. This is used to gain insight into the DNA packaging process. The experimental reference system for the present study is the recent…
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…
A general theoretical framework is put forth to organize and understand various observed phenomena and mathematical relationships in the field of molecular biology. By modeling each cell in eukaryotic organisms as a processor having a…
The question of how stiff polymers are able to pack into small containers is particularly relevant to the study of DNA packaging in viruses. A reduced version of the problem based on coarse-grained representations of the main components of…
The ejection of DNA from a bacterial virus (``phage'') into its host cell is a biologically important example of the translocation of a macromolecular chain along its length through a membrane. The simplest mechanism for this motion is…
DNA self-assembly is a well-understood nanotechnology to obtain extremely ordered structures from the nanometer to up to the hundred of microns scale. By contrast, DNA hydrogels rely on the disordered assembly of DNA building blocks to…
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…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
There are many processes in biology in which mechanical forces are generated. Force-bearing networks can transduce locally developed mechanical signals very extensively over different parts of the cell or tissues. In this article we conduct…