Monday, March 19, 2012

1203.3577 (Flavio Romano et al.)

The effect of topology on the structure and free energy landscape of DNA
kissing complexes
   [PDF]

Flavio Romano, Alex Hudson, Jonathan P. K. Doye, Thomas E. Ouldridge, Ard A. Louis
We use a recently developed coarse-grained model for DNA to study kissing complexes formed by hybridization of complementary hairpin loops. The binding of the loops is topologically constrained because their linking number must remain constant. By studying systems with linking numbers -1, 0 or 1 we show that the average number of interstrand base pairs is larger when the topology is more favourable for the right-handed wrapping of strands around each other. The thermodynamic stability of the kissing complex also decreases when the linking number changes from -1 to 0 to 1. The structures of the kissing complexes typically involve two intermolecular helices that coaxially stack with the hairpin stems at a parallel four-way junction.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.3577

No comments:

Post a Comment