Synergy between Protein Positioning and DNA Elasticity: Energy Minimization of Protein-Decorated DNA Minicircles.

ABSTRACT: The binding of proteins onto DNA contributes to the shaping and packaging of the genome as well as to the expression of specific genetic messages. With a view to understanding the interplay between the presence of proteins and the deformation of DNA involved in such processes, we developed a new method to minimize the elastic energy of DNA fragments at the mesoscale level. Our method makes it possible to obtain the optimal pathways of protein-decorated DNA molecules for which the terminal base pairs are spatially constrained. We focus in this work on the deformations induced by selected architectural proteins on circular DNA. We report the energy landscapes of DNA minicircles subjected to different levels of torsional stress and containing one or two proteins as functions of the chain leng

SUBMITTER: Clauvelin N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9434916 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature