Two Adhesive Sites Can Enhance the Knotting Probability of DNA.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26136125.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0132132 and PMC identifier 4489926.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Self-entanglement, or knotting, is entropically favored in long polymers. Relatively short polymers such as proteins can knot as well, but in this case the entanglement is mainly driven by fine-tuned, sequence-specific interactions. The relation between the sequence of a long polymer and its topological state is here investigated by means of a coarse-grained model of DNA. We demonstrate that the introduction of two adhesive regions along the sequence of a self-avoiding chain substantially increases the probability of forming a knot.
Medical subject headings
- Computer Simulation
- DNA
- Models, Molecular
- Nucleic Acid Conformation