Eur. Phys. J. E (2006) 19: 345-346
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2005-10070-2

Focus Point

Comment on the paper “Comparison of the measured phase diagrams in the force-temperature plane for the unzipping of two different natural DNA sequences” by C.H. Lee, C. Danilowicz, V.W Coljee, and M. Prentiss

Laboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'ENS, CNRS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005, Paris, France

^* e-mail: simona.cocco@lps.ens.fr

Received: 2 December 2005
Accepted: 3 February 2006
Published online: 24 February 2006

Abstract

The paper by Lee et al. describes the experiments on the unzipping of λ DNA sequences as a function of force and temperature. This comment aims to stress that the unzipping takes place out of equilibrium due to high sequence-dependent free-energy barriers. The force at which a heterogeneous sequence is unzipped therefore depends on the experimental waiting time.