Persistence length of DNA

Value 150 bp
Organism Generic
Reference Garcia HG, Grayson P, Han L, Inamdar M, Kondev J, Nelson PC, Phillips R, Widom J, Wiggins PA. Biological consequences of tightly bent DNA: the other life of a macromolecular celebrity. Biopolymers. 2007 Feb 5 85(2):115-30.PubMed ID17103419
Comments The persistence length is a basic mechanical property quantifying the stiffness of a long polymer. Formally, the persistence length, P, is defined as the length over which correlations in the direction of the tangent are lost. Alternatively, The idea of the persistence length is that it defines the scale over which a polymer remains roughly unbent in solution. A piece of cooked spaghetti has a persistence length on the order of 10 cm (Wikipedia). This corresponds to physical length of 50 nm (length of each base pair ~0.3 nm). See BNID 103112, 103785, 106650
Entered by Uri M
ID 103113