title: Denaturation transition of stretched DNA.
abstract: In the last two decades, single-molecule force measurements using optical and magnetic tweezers and atomic force spectroscopy have dramatically expanded our knowledge of nucleic acids and proteins. These techniques characterize the force on a biomolecule required to produce a given molecular extension. When stretching long DNA molecules, the observed force-extension relationship exhibits a characteristic plateau at approximately 65 pN where the DNA may be extended to almost twice its B-DNA length with almost no increase in force. In the present review, I describe this transition in terms of the Poland-Scheraga model and summarize recent related studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas at Brownsville, Brownsville, TX 78520, U.S.A. hanke@phys.utb.edu
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hanke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020029:Base Pairing; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009691:Nucleic Acid Denaturation; D044367:Phase Transition
chemical_list: D004247:DNA