| Comments |
"The idea of the persistence length is that it defines the scale over which a polymer remains roughly unbent in solution. At longer scales, thermal fluctuations result in spontaneous bending of the DNA. For DNA, the persistence length
has a value of ~50 nm (~150 bp). Scales larger than the persistence length are typical of those that DNA assumes in
most in vitro molecular biology experiments such as single-molecule DNA pulling experiments.
(refs 2,3)." "In this section, [researchers] will focus on viruses that enclose DNA
within icosahedral capsids, such as herpes simplex virus 1
(HSV-1) and bacteriophage ?, as well as nearly-icosahedral asymmetric capsids (such as T7). To get a sense of the degree of confinement, it is useful to compare the capsid dimensions, 30–100 nm in diameter (ref 6), to the persistence length, ?p˜50nm. That is, the radius of the capsids is generally less than ?p." See BNID 103113, 106650 |