Size Effect on Structure and Stiffness of Viral DNA during Temperature Variation
Structure and stiffness of nucleic acids are closely related to viral infectivity. The article is aimed to clarify a recent controversy on structure variation of viral DNA in temperature-dependent experiments. A multi-scale correlation between microscopic structure of viral DNA and its bulk stiffness is formulated by presenting a two-zone mesoscopic free energy model. Results reveal that the increasing temperature promotes DNA structure transformation from order to disorder, and leads to size effect on temperature-dependency of stiffness and structure of viral DNA.
biophysics↗