Electronic transport in DNA sequences: The role of correlations and inter-strand coupling

✍ Scribed by E.L. Albuquerque; M.L. Lyra; F.A.B.F. de Moura

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 274 KB
• Volume: 370
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2006.02.043

✦ Synopsis

We investigate the electronic properties in sequences of single and double-strand DNA molecules made up from the nucleotides guanine G, adenine A, cytosine C and thymine T. Using a tight-binding formulation we solve the timedependent Schro¨dinger equation to compute the spread of initially localized wave packets. We also compute the localization length in finite segments by employing a Green's function recursion method. We compare the results for the genomic DNA sequence with those of two artificial sequences, namely the quasiperiodic Rudin-Shapiro one, which has long-range correlations, and a intra-strand pair correlated DNA sequence. We found that the short-range character of the intra-strand correlations suffices for a quantitative description of the one-electron wave-packet dynamics in the doublestrand real DNA sequences. Further, the inter-strand coupling promotes electronic transport over a longer segment.