PubMed Health⌕ Search

PubMed · 11308675

Long-range intermolecular interaction between broken DNA fragments.

Abstract

We analyzed the long-range intermolecular interaction between fragments of broken DNA. We considered two constituents of long-range intermolecular interaction. The first is a net electrostatic Coulomb interaction between charges, involved in a structure of opposite nucleotides, which we evaluate using Debye-Huckel theory. The second one is the Van der Waals interaction between the nucleotides. The general Lifshitz theory of Van der Waals forces was used to evaluate this interaction. Numerical calculations showed that a repulsive force between broken DNA fragments can arise in specific cases. This repulsion can prevent DNA from repairing itself after a double-strand break. The height of the barrier decreases with an increase of the ionic strength of the intracellular milieu, or with a reduction of its viscosity.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

A O Pinchuk, V I Vysotskii. 2001-02-22. Long-range intermolecular interaction between broken DNA fragments.. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.63.031904

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

Application of mutated miR-206 target sites enables skeletal muscle-specific silencing of transgene expression of cardiotropic AAV9 vectors.

Insertion of completely complementary microRNA (miR) target sites (miRTS) into a transgene has been shown to be a valuable approach to specifically repress transgene expression in non-targeted tissues. miR-122TS have been successfully used to silence transgene expression in the liver following systemic application of cardiotropic adeno-associated virus (AAV) 9 vectors. For miR-206-mediated skeletal muscle-specific silencing of miR-206TS-bearing AAV9 vectors, however, we found this approach failed due to the expression of another member (miR-1) of the same miR family in heart tissue, the intended target. We introduced single-nucleotide substitutions into the miR-206TS and searched for those which prevented miR-1-mediated cardiac repression. Several mutated miR-206TS (m206TS), in particular m206TS-3G, were resistant to miR-1, but remained fully sensitive to miR-206. All these variants had mismatches in the seed region of the miR/m206TS duplex in common. Furthermore, we found that some m206TS, containing mismatches within the seed region or within the 3' portion of the miR-206, even enhanced the miR-206- mediated transgene repression. In vivo expression of m206TS-3G- and miR-122TS-containing transgene of systemically applied AAV9 vectors was strongly repressed in both skeletal muscle and the liver but remained high in the heart. Thus, site-directed mutagenesis of miRTS provides a new strategy to differentiate transgene de-targeting of related miRs.

Base Pairing↗

Charge localization in stacked radical cation DNA base pairs and the benzene dimer studied by self-interaction corrected density-functional theory.

The incomplete cancellation of the electron self-interaction can be a serious shortcoming of density-functional theory especially when treating odd-electron systems. In this work, several popular and potentially viable correction schemes are applied in order to characterize the electronic structure of stacked molecular pairs, consisting of a neutral molecule and adjacent radical cation, as a function of separation distance. The unphysical sharing of the positive charge between adjacent molecules separated by 6-7 A is corrected for by applying a new empirical scheme proposed by VandeVondele and Sprik [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2005, 7, 1363] with a unique choice of parameters. This method is subsequently applied to characterize the electronic structure of two neighboring guanines excised from a canonical Arnott B-DNA structure and will be used in future investigations of certain model DNA fibers.

Base Pairing↗