Publication Date:
2012-09-01
Description:
The classical view of DNA posits that DNA must be stiff below the persistence length [〈150 base pairs (bp)], but recent studies addressing this have yielded contradictory results. We developed a fluorescence-based, protein-free assay for studying the cyclization of single DNA molecules in real time. The assay samples the equilibrium population of a sharply bent, transient species that is entirely suppressed in single-molecule mechanical measurements and is biologically more relevant than the annealed species sampled in the traditional ligase-based assay. The looping rate has a weak length dependence between 67 and 106 bp that cannot be described by the worm-like chain model. Many biologically important protein-DNA interactions that involve looping and bending of DNA below 100 bp likely use this intrinsic bendability of DNA.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565842/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565842/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Vafabakhsh, Reza -- Ha, Taekjip -- GM065367/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- R01 GM065367/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- Howard Hughes Medical Institute/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Aug 31;337(6098):1097-101. doi: 10.1126/science.1224139.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22936778" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Avidin/chemistry
;
Base Sequence
;
Biotin/chemistry
;
Cyclization
;
DNA, Circular/*chemistry
;
Fluorescence
;
Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer/*methods
;
*Nucleic Acid Conformation
;
Polyethylene Glycols/chemistry
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
