Regensburg 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm
Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 21: Biopolymers, biomaterials and bioinspired functional materials (joint session CPP/BP)
BP 21.2: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 3. April 2019, 16:15–16:30, H13
DNA crookedness regulates DNA mechanical properties at short length scales — •J.G. Vilhena1, Alberto Marin-Gonzalez2, Fernando Moreno-Herrero2, and Ruben Perez3 — 1Department of Physics, University of Basel — 2Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia, CSIC, Spain — 3Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain
Sequence-dependent DNA conformation and flexibility play a fundamental role in specificity of DNA-protein interactions. Here we quantify the DNA crookedness: a sequence-dependent deformation of DNA that consists on periodic bends of the base pair centers chain. Using extensive 100 µs-long all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we found that DNA crookedness and its associated flexibility are bijective: unveiling a one-to-one relation between DNA structure and dynamics. This allowed us to build a predictive model to compute the stretch moduli of different DNA sequences from solely their structure. Sequences with very little crookedness show extremely high stretching stiffness and have been previously shown to form unstable nucleosomes and promote gene expression. Interestingly, the crookedness can be tailored by epigenetic modifications, known to affect gene expression. Our results rationalize the idea that the DNA sequence is not only a chemical code, but also a physical one that allows to finely regulate its mechanical properties and, possibly, its 3D arrangement inside the cell.