title: Stretching of a single-stranded DNA: evidence for structural transition.
abstract: Recent experiments have shown that the force-extension (F-x) curve for single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) consisting only of adenine [poly(dA)] is significantly different from thymine [poly(dT)]. Here, we show that the base stacking interaction is not sufficient to describe the F-x curves as seen in the experiments. A reduction in the reaction coordinate arising from the formation of helix at low forces and an increase in the distance between consecutive phosphates of unstacked bases in the stretched state at high force in the proposed model qualitatively reproduce the experimentally observed features. The multistep plateau in the F-x curve is a signature of structural change in ssDNA.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221 005, India.
authors.forename: Garima
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mishra
authors.forename: Debaprasad
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Giri
authors.forename: Sanjay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
mesh_terms: D020029:Base Pairing; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004277:DNA, Single-Stranded / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D008958:Models, Molecular; D009711:Nucleotides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D004277:DNA, Single-Stranded; D009711:Nucleotides