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Updated: Feb 14, 2026

CD Spectroscopy to Study DNA-Protein Interactions
Published on: February 10, 2022
Water-mediated correlations in DNA-enzyme interactions
P Kurian1, A Capolupo2, T J A Craddock3
1Quantum Biology Laboratory, National Human Genome Center and Department of Medicine, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC 20059, USA.
Abstract:
In this paper we consider dipole-mediated correlations between DNA and enzymes in the context of their water environment. Such correlations emerge from electric dipole-dipole interactions between aromatic ring structures in DNA and in enzymes. We show that there are matching collective modes between DNA and enzyme dipole fields, and that a dynamic time-averaged polarization vanishes in the water dipole field only if either DNA, enzyme, or both are absent from the sample. This persistent field may serve as the electromagnetic image that, in popular colloquialisms about DNA biochemistry, allows enzymes to "scan" or "read" the double helix. Topologically nontrivial configurations in the coherent ground state requiring clamplike enzyme behavior on the DNA may stem, ultimately, from spontaneously broken gauge symmetries.
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