Tension and mobility of a DNA fragment in the lakes-straits model

✍ Scribed by Dirk Loomans; Igor M. Sokolov; Alexander Blumen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 482 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1022-1344
• DOI: 10.1002/mats.1995.040040110

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

We consider numerically, in the framework of the lakes‐straits model, the mobility of a DNA chain under field‐inversion gel‐electrophoresis (FIGE). Here we investigate the role of the gel's structure on the mobility. We consider two situations: (i) a DNA chain fragment is bounded by two straits (narrow gateways) at a fixed distance, but is otherwise free, and (ii) the fragment is, in addition, confined with in a closed volume (pore). We calculate the tension on the DNA fragment in the two cases. For Gaussian chains we evaluate the corresponding statistical weights exactly, using a cellular automation algorithm. We find that the resulting tension differs drastically in the two models considered. Nonetheless this difference influences only weakly the overall FIGE mobility.