Berlin 2008 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 2: DNA and Chromatin
BP 2.8: Talk
Monday, February 25, 2008, 12:30–12:45, PC 203
Thermodynamic Analysis of Interacting Nucleic Acids with Application to Biosensing Devices — •Justin Bois1 and Niles Pierce2 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany — 2California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
DNA and RNA are versatile construction materials. By appropriately designing base sequences, synthetic nucleic acid systems can be programmed to self-assemble into complex structures. An understanding of the underlying free energy landscapes of these systems is crucial for their design, characterization, and control. This talk will focus on theoretical and computational tools to characterize the equilibrium properties of an entire test tube of interacting nucleic acid strands. The utility of the approach will be demonstrated by elucidating the empirical behavior of a new class of DNA-based instrument-free biosensors currently under development.