title: Excluded volume effects in gene stretching.
abstract: We investigate the effects excluded volume on the stretching of a single DNA in solution. We find that for small force F, the extension h is not linear in F but proportion to F(gamma), with gamma = (1 - nu)/nu, where nu is the well-known universal correlation length exponent. A freely joint chain model with the segment length chosen to reproduce the small extension behavior gives excellent fit to the experimental data of lambda-phage DNA over the whole experimental range. We show that excluded volume effects are stronger in two dimensions and derive results in two dimensions that are different from the three-dimensional results. This suggests experiments to be performed in these lower dimensions.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA 70813. pmlam@phys.subr.edu
authors.forename: Pui-Man
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Lam
mesh_terms: D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D002627:Chemistry, Physical; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation
chemical_list: D004247:DNA