Department of Physics,Sharif University of Technology
Abstract
In this paper, we try to explain the origin of the anomalous elastic behavior of nanometersized
DNA molecules, which has been observed in all-atom molecular dynamic simulations [A.K. Mazur,
Biophys. J. 2006]. It is shown that this anomalous behavior is a consequence of nonlocal interactions
between DNA base pairs and the intrinsic curvature of DNA. A nonlocal harmonic elastic rod model is
proposed, which can successfully describe the elastic behavior of short DNA molecules.
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