Eur. Phys. J. E (2007) 24: 61-67
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2007-10213-5

Regular Article

Monomer dynamics in single- and double-stranded DNA coils

¹ Institute of Physics, P.J. Safarik University, Jesenna 5, 041 54, Kosice, Slovakia
² Department of Physics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Technical University in Kosice, Park Komenskeho 2, 040 20, Kosice, Slovakia

^* e-mail: vladimir.lisy@tuke.sk

Received: 23 January 2007
Accepted: 2 August 2007
Published online: 3 September 2007

Abstract

In our paper (Tothova et al., Czech. J. Phys. 55, 221 (2005)), the first observation of the kinetics of individual polymer monomers using the fluorescence correlation technique (R. Shusterman et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 048303 (2004)) has been interpreted within the bead-spring theory. Optimizing the joint Rouse-Zimm model to the experimental data, the phenomenological parameters for the statistical-mechanical description of the universal behavior of double- and single-stranded DNA and the dominant types of their dynamics have been determined. Recently, these data have been corrected (R. Shusterman et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 029901 (2007)). In the present work, the fits of the theory to the new data are given. The main conclusions of our preceding paper remain unchanged but some of the polymer parameters have changed. The new data allow a significantly better agreement with the theory than the previous ones. Our calculations confirm that dsDNA follows mainly the classical Zimm-type kinetics rather than the Rouse one as it was proposed by Shusterman et al. Single-stranded DNA also behaves predominantly as the Zimm polymer. To support these conclusions, we analyze the draining effects on the monomer dynamics and the applicability of simple “universal” laws, according to which the monomer mean square displacement scales with the time as t ^1/2 and t ^2/3 for the Rouse and Zimm polymers, respectively.