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Transient electric birefringence study of the length and stiffness of short DNA restriction fragments
Author(s) -
Elias John G.,
Eden Don
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
biopolymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1097-0282
pISSN - 0006-3525
DOI - 10.1002/bip.1981.360201107
Subject(s) - chemistry , birefringence , base pair , restriction fragment , pbr322 , transient (computer programming) , diffusion , relaxation (psychology) , base (topology) , rotational diffusion , molecular physics , dna , molecule , atomic physics , analytical chemistry (journal) , plasmid , optics , physics , thermodynamics , chromatography , social psychology , psychology , biochemistry , mathematical analysis , mathematics , organic chemistry , computer science , operating system
Transient electric birefringence measurements of the rotational diffusion constant of five short restriction fragments of the plasmid pBR322 show that the hydrodynamic length is independent of sodium ion concentration in the range of 0.2 to 2.5 m M . The fragments are too stiff to be modeled as wormlike molecules. The rotational relaxation times of the fragments, which range from 64 to 124 base pairs, have been used to calculate the rise per base pair using six different theoretical expressions for the length dependence of the rotational diffusion coefficient of straight cylinder. The best estimate for the rise per base pair of Na‐DNA in solution is 3.3 ± 0.1 Å.