Propagation of twist solitons in real DNA chains

Abstract

We report on numerical investigations concerning the propagation of solitons in a real DNA chain (the Human Adenovirus 2) using a realistic model of DNA torsional dynamics; this takes fully into account the inhomogeneities in the real chain. We find that twist solitons propagate for considerable distances (2-10 times their diameters) before stopping due to phonon emission. Our results show that twist solitons may exist in real DNA chains; and on a more general level that solitonic propagation can take place in highly inhomogeneous media.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (6)

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• Solitons in a double pendulums chain model, and DNA roto-torsional dynamics
• Twist solitons in complex macromolecules: from DNA to polyethylene
• Sine-Gordon solitons, auxiliary fields, and singular limit of a double pendulums chain
• Dynamics of the topological structures in inhomogeneous media