Statistical properties of metastable intermediates in DNA unzipping
Autor/a
Huguet, Josep Maria
Forns, N.
Ritort, F.
Fecha de publicación
2009ISSN
0031-9007
Resumen
We unzip DNA molecules using optical tweezers and determine the sizes of the cooperatively unzipping and zipping regions separating consecutive metastable intermediates along the unzipping pathway. Sizes are found to be distributed following a power law, ranging from one base pair up to more than a hundred base pairs. We find that a large fraction of unzipping regions smaller than 10 bp are seldom detected because of the high compliance of the released single stranded DNA. We show how the compliance of a single nucleotide sets a limit value around 0.1 N/m for the stiffness of any local force probe aiming to discriminate one base pair at a time in DNA unzipping experiments.
Tipo de documento
Artículo
Versión del documento
Versión publicada
Lengua
English
Materias (CDU)
57 - Biología
Palabras clave
DNA
Páginas
4
Publicado por
American Physical Society
Colección
103
Publicado en
Physical Review Letters
Citación
Huguet, Josep Maria; Forns, N.; Ritort, F. Statistical Properties of Metastable Intermediates in DNA Unzipping. Physical Review Letters, 2009, 103, 248106. Disponible en: <https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.248106>. Fecha de acceso: 18 mar. 2024. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.248106
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