Elastic origin of chiral selection in DNA wrapping

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2008 Feb;77(2 Pt 1):021904. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.77.021904. Epub 2008 Feb 6.

Abstract

We investigated the mechanism that underlies the chiral selection on the direction of wrapping of DNA around a nucleosome core particle. A coarse-grained model for the formation of a nucleosome is introduced, in which DNA is treated as a semiflexible polymer and the histone core is modeled by a spherical particle. Asymmetric coupling between bending and twisting is incorporated into the model DNA, which is expected from the double-stranded helical structure of DNA. We show that the tendency of DNA to twist in a left-handed manner upon bending gives rise to the selective left-handed wrapping, provided that the size of the core particle is chosen appropriately. This result suggests the critical importance of the chiral asymmetry inherent in the bending-twisting elasticity of DNA as well as the size of the core in determining the handedness of wrapping in nucleosome formation.

MeSH terms

  • Computer Simulation
  • DNA / chemistry*
  • DNA / ultrastructure*
  • Elasticity
  • Isomerism
  • Models, Chemical*
  • Models, Molecular*
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation
  • Nucleosomes / chemistry*
  • Nucleosomes / ultrastructure*

Substances

  • Nucleosomes
  • DNA