Stretching of long double-stranded DNA and RNA described by the same model

Abstract

An open question in polymer biophysics is how to describe the force-extension behavior of long DNA and RNA within a simple model. We propose a bead-spring model that accurately reproduces a variety of experimental force-extension curves of long double-stranded DNA and RNA, including torsionally constrained and unconstrained, and negatively supercoiled. A key feature of the model is a specific non-convex energy function of the spring. We provide an algorithm for obtaining five required parameters of the model.