title: Entropic compression of interacting DNA loops.
abstract: We solve a model for the equilibrium folding of DNA via the formation of randomly placed (nonspecific) loops. We find that the loop rearrangement entropy drives a significant reduction in loop size as more loops form. The reduction of the most probable loop size occurs over a wide range of forces and is enhanced by interloop cooperativity, indicating that it should be observable in single DNA experiments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Chicago, 60607, USA. sumithra@uic.edu
authors.forename: Sumithra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sankararaman
authors.forename: John F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Marko
mesh_terms: D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D019277:Entropy; D008956:Models, Chemical; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation
chemical_list: D004247:DNA