Quantum theory of thermal fluctuations in DNA miniplasmids

✍ Scribed by Irwin Tobias

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 130 KB
• Volume: 72
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7608
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-461x(1999)72:4<357::aid-qua19>3.0.co;2-i

✦ Synopsis

A recent analysis of the normal modes of vibration of a ring formed Ž from an elastic rod was taken as the basis of a theory of the classical high-temperature . limit statistical thermodynamics of a canonical ensemble of DNA minicircles Ž . miniplasmids , each having a given number N of base pairs and given linking number difference ⌬ L . Here, the vibrational modes are taken to be quantum mechanical in k nature, which, in effect, generalizes the treatment to all temperatures. It is found that ² : significant differences between the ensemble average of the writhing number W as r determined from the general theory and that calculated using the classical formalism do not appear except at very low temperatures.