title: Electronic transport in DNA.
abstract: We study the electronic properties of DNA by way of a tight-binding model applied to four particular DNA sequences. The charge transfer properties are presented in terms of localization lengths (crudely speaking, the length over which electrons travel). Various types of disorder, including random potentials, are employed to account for different real environments. We have performed calculations on poly(dG)-poly(dC), telomeric-DNA, random-ATGC DNA, and lambda-DNA. We find that random and lambda-DNA have localization lengths allowing for electron motion among a few dozen basepairs only. A novel enhancement of localization lengths is observed at particular energies for an increasing binary backbone disorder. We comment on the possible biological relevance of sequence-dependent charge transfer in DNA.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department and Centre for Scientific Computing, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Daphne
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Klotsa
authors.forename: Rudolf A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Römer
authors.forename: Matthew S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Turner
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004247:DNA / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry*; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000379:methods*; D004579:Electron Transport; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D055672:Static Electricity; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D004247:DNA