Brownian Dynamics Studies on DNA Gel Electrophoresis. II. `Defect' Dynamics in the Elongation-Contraction Motion

Abstract

By means of the Brownian dynamics (BD) method of simulations we have developed, we study dynamics of individual DNA undergoing constant field gel electrophoresis (CFGE), focusing on the relevance of the `defect' concept due to de Gennes in CFGE. The corresponding embodiment, which we call {\it slack beads} (s-beads) is explicitly introduced in our BD model. In equilibrium under a vanishing field the distance between s-beads and their hopping range are found to be randomly distributed following a Poisson distribution. In the strong field range, where a chain undergoes the elongation-contraction motion, s-beads are observed to be alternatively annihilated in elongation and created in contraction of the chain. On the other hand, the distribution of hopping range of s-beads does not differ much from that in equilibrium. The results indicate that the motion of the chain elongated consists of a huge number of random movements of s-beads. We have also confirmed that these features of s-beads agree qualitatively with those of s-monomers in the extended bond fluctuation model (EBFM) which we recently proposed. The coincidence of the two simulations strongly supports the stochastic semi-local movement of s-monomers which we {\it a priori} introduced into the EBFM.