Structural Basis for Elastic Mechanical Properties of the DNA Double Helix

In this article, we investigate the principal structural features of the DNA double helix and their effects on its elastic mechanical properties. We develop, in the pursuit of this purpose, a helical continuum model consisting of a soft helical core and two stiff ribbons wrapping around it. The prop...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-04, Vol.11 (4), p.e0153228-e0153228
Main Authors: Kim, Young-Joo, Kim, Do-Nyun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerospace engineering
Analysis
Biomechanical Phenomena
Continuum modeling
Coupling
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
DNA - chemistry
Elastic properties
Elasticity
Engineering and Technology
Finite Element Analysis
Finite element method
Grooves
Helicity
Humans
Mechanical properties
Mechanics
Models, Molecular
Molecular Dynamics Simulation
Nucleic Acid Conformation
Overwinding
Phosphates
Physical Sciences
Rigidity
Stiffness
Stretching
Structure
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this article, we investigate the principal structural features of the DNA double helix and their effects on its elastic mechanical properties. We develop, in the pursuit of this purpose, a helical continuum model consisting of a soft helical core and two stiff ribbons wrapping around it. The proposed model can reproduce the negative twist-stretch coupling of the helix successfully as well as its global stretching, bending, and torsional rigidities measured experimentally. Our parametric study of the model using the finite element method further reveals that the stiffness of phosphate backbones is a crucial factor for the counterintuitive overwinding behavior of the duplex and its extraordinarily high torsional rigidity, the major-minor grooves augment the twist-stretch coupling, and the change of the helicity might be responsible for the transition from a negative to a positive twist-stretching coupling when a tensile force is applied to the duplex.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0153228