Mesoscopic model for nano-channel confined DNA

Abstract

I present a Hamiltonian model and a computational method suitable to evaluate structural and thermodynamic properties of helical molecules embedded in crowded environments which may confine the space available to the base pair fluctuations. It is shown that, for the specific case of a short DNA fragment in a nanochannel, the molecule is markedly over-twisted and stretched by narrowing the width of the channel.