Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
To cope with volume constraints, DNA can pack itself in the appropriate solution conditions with the help of ions and other molecules. Usually, DNA condensation is defined as "the collapse of extended DNA chains into compact, orderly particles containing only one or a few molecules". [ 3 ]
The highest DNA adsorption efficiencies occur in the presence of buffer solution with a pH at or below the pKa of the surface silanol groups. The mechanism behind DNA adsorption onto silica is not fully understood; one possible explanation involves reduction of the silica surface's negative charge due to the high ionic strength of the buffer.
The first hydration shell of a sodium ion dissolved in water. DNA is typically separated from other cell constituents in a two-phase solution of phenol and water. Due to its highly charged phosphate backbone DNA is polar and will concentrate in the water phase while lipids and proteins will concentrate in the phenol phase.
The buoyant density of most DNA is 1.7g/cm 3. [11] DNA does not usually exist as a single strand, but instead as a pair of strands that are held tightly together. [9] [12] These two long strands coil around each other, in the shape of a double helix.
DNA supercoiling is important for DNA packaging within all cells. Because the length of DNA can be thousands of times that of a cell, packaging this genetic material into the cell or nucleus (in eukaryotes) is a difficult feat. Supercoiling of DNA reduces the space and allows for DNA to be packaged.
For DNA oligonucleotides, i.e. short sequences of DNA, the thermodynamics of hybridization can be accurately described as a two-state process. In this approximation one neglects the possibility of intermediate partial binding states in the formation of a double strand state from two single stranded oligonucleotides.
DNA within the nucleosome remains fully wrapped for only 250 ms before it is unwrapped for 10-50 ms and then rapidly rewrapped, as measured using time-resolved FRET. [40] This implies that DNA does not need to be actively dissociated from the nucleosome but that there is a significant fraction of time during which it is fully accessible.
In nature, DNA can form three structures, A-, B-, and Z-DNA. A- and B-DNA are very similar, forming right-handed helices, whereas Z-DNA is a left-handed helix with a zig-zag phosphate backbone. Z-DNA is thought to play a specific role in chromatin structure and transcription because of the properties of the junction between B- and Z-DNA.