A twist in chiral interaction between biological helices

Abstract

Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ~((RH)^1/2)/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the closest distance between their axes, and H is the helical pitch. Estimates based on this formula suggest a solution for the puzzle of small interaxial angles in a-helix bundles and in cholesteric phases of DNA.

7 pages, 2 figures, PDF file only

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Chirality and Equilibrium Biopolymer Bundles
• Giant Charge Inversion of a Macroion Due to Multivalent Counterions and Monovalent Coions: Molecular Dynamics Study
• Counterion-mediated Electrostatic Interactions between Helical Molecules
• Braided Bundles and Compact Coils: The Structure and Thermodynamics of Hexagonally-Packed, Chiral Filament Assemblies
• Generalized van der Waals theory for the twist elastic modulus and helical pitch of cholesterics
• The Persistence Length of a Strongly Charged, Rod-like, Polyelectrolyte in the Presence of Salt
• Cholesteric order in systems of helical Yukawa rods
• Spontaneous chirality via long-range electrostatic forces
• Conformational Instability of Rodlike Polyelectrolytes due to Counterion Fluctuations
• DNA condensation and redissolution: Interaction between overcharged DNA molecules
• Structure and stability of chiral beta-tapes: a computational coarse-grained approach
• Torsional fluctuations in columnar DNA assemblies
• Hierarchical bounding structures for efficient virial computations: Towards a realistic molecular description of cholesterics
• Geometry of flexible filament cohesion: Better contact through twist?
• Network of Hydrogen Bonds as a Medium for DNA Interaction in Solvents
• Symmetries of Electrostatic Interaction between DNA Molecules