1.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys
; 80(3 Pt 1): 031917, 2009 Sep.
Artículo
en Inglés
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-19905156
RESUMEN
Motivated by recent experiments, we develop a model for DNA toroids under external tension. We find that tori are the equilibrium states for our model up to a critical tension, above which they become only metastable. Above this tension, we find a cascade of transitions between discrete toroid states that successively lower the winding number, until the ground state (rod) is reached. In this process, this model predicts a nearly constant force plateau as a function of extension, in agreement with experiment.