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Published on: April 26, 2013
Understanding the anomalous electrophoresis of bent DNA molecules: a reptation model
1Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093.
Abstract:
In polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, the retardation of DNA molecules containing regions of intrinsic curvature can be explained by a novel reptation model that includes the elastic free energy of the DNA chain. Computer simulations based on this model give results that reproduce the dependence of anomalous mobility on gel concentration, which is quantified by new experimental data on the mobilities of circularly permuted isomers of kinetoplast DNA fragments. Fitting of the data required allowing for the elasticity of the gel.
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