title: Transition on the entropic elasticity of DNA induced by intercalating molecules.
abstract: We use optical tweezers to perform stretching experiments on DNA molecules when interacting with the drugs daunomycin and ethidium bromide, which intercalate the DNA molecule. Our results show that the persistence length of the DNA-drug complexes increases strongly as the drug concentration increases up to some critical value. Above this critical value, the persistence length decreases abruptly and remains approximately constant for larger drug concentrations, at least in the concentration range used in our experiments. Measured intercalators critical concentrations for the persistence length transition coincide with the reported values for the helix-coil transition of DNA-drug complexes obtained from sedimentation experiments. The contour length of the molecules increases monotonically and saturates as the drug concentration increases. The neighbor exclusion model fits to our results for the total drug concentration as a function of the relative increase of the contour length.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Física, ICEx, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Caixa Postal 702, Belo Horizonte, CEP 31270-901 Minas Gerais, Brazil.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Rocha
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.forename: O N
authors.initials: ON
authors.lastname: Mesquita
mesh_terms: D000903:Antibiotics, Antineoplastic / Q000737:chemistry*; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D003630:Daunorubicin / Q000737:chemistry; D004347:Drug Interactions; D004548:Elasticity; D019277:Entropy; D004996:Ethidium / Q000737:chemistry; D007364:Intercalating Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D014461:Ultracentrifugation / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D000903:Antibiotics, Antineoplastic; D007364:Intercalating Agents; D004247:DNA; D004996:Ethidium; D003630:Daunorubicin