Temperature dependence of DNA condensation at high ionic concentration

Abstract

A series of experiments pointed out that compact states of DNA condensed by multivalent cation prefer higher temperature. The condensed DNA takes elongated coil or compact globule states and the population of the compact globule states increases with an increase in temperature. At the same time, a recent experimental work carried out in buffer solution without multivalent cation points out that DNA persistence length strongly depends on the temperature. DNA persistence length is a key parameter for quantitative interpretation of the conformational properties of DNA and related to the bending rigidity of DNA. It is necessary to revolve the effects of temperature dependence of persistence length on DNA condensation, and a model including the temperature dependence of persistence length and strong correlation of multivalent cation on DNA is provided. The autocorrelation function of the tangent vectors is found as an effective way to detect the temperature dependence of toroid conformations. With an increase in temperature, the first periodic oscillation in the autocorrelation function shifts left and the number of segments containing the first periodic oscillation decreases gradually. According to the experiments mentioned above, the long-axis length is defined to estimate the temperature dependence of condensation process further. At the temperatures defined in experiments mentioned above, the relation between long-axis length and temperature matches the experimental results.