title: Elastic correlations in nucleosomal DNA structure.
abstract: The structure of DNA in the nucleosome core particle is studied using an elastic model that incorporates anisotropy in the bending energetics and twist-bend coupling. Using the experimentally determined structure of nucleosomal DNA [T. J. Richmond and C. A. Davey, Nature (London) 423, 145 (2003)], it is shown that elastic correlations exist between twist, roll, tilt, and stretching of DNA, as well as the distance between phosphate groups. The twist-bend coupling term is shown to be able to capture these correlations to a large extent, and a fit to the experimental data yields a new estimate of G = 25 nm for the value of the twist-bend coupling constant.
authors.affiliation: Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge CB3 0EH, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Farshid
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mohammad-Rafiee
authors.forename: Ramin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Golestanian
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D004548:Elasticity; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D008956:Models, Chemical; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009707:Nucleosomes / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D009707:Nucleosomes; D004247:DNA