Mechanobiology of Short DNA Molecules: A Single Molecule Perspective.

Abstract

Mechanical properties of DNA are known to play a significant role in several biological processes like wrapping of DNA around histones and looping. Most of these cellular events occur on a DNA length scale of a few hundred basepairs. Single molecule methods have been highly successful in directly investigating heterogeneity in different biomolecular systems and serve as ideal tools to study the mechanical properties of DNA. However, their use in studying DNA of contour lengths less than a kilobase are fraught with experimental difficulties.

The research presented in this thesis explores the behavior of short stretches of DNA (< 500bp) using existing and novel single molecule methods. We have quantified the variation in persistence lengths between sequences having different elasticity using a constant force axial optical tweezers. Our experiments have also revealed that this difference in persistence lengths manifests itself as a difference in looping lifetimes of lac repressor, in sequences having the aforementioned constructs as the intervening sequence between the operator sites. We have also developed a system to probe DNA dynamics in vivo. We have found that the active processes in the cell have distinct effects on dynamics of DNA and eliminating the active processes causes a 'phase transition' like behavior in the inside the cell. We are currently extending this technique to understand DNA dynamics inside bacterial systems. Our results provide vital insights into mechanical properties of DNA and the effect of athermal fl uctuations on DNA dynamics.