Collins Conference Room
Seminar
US Mountain Time
Our campus is closed to the public for this event.
Amir Bar (Weizmann Institute)
Abstract. DNA denaturation is the process by which the two strands of a DNA molecule separate. This process is essential both for biological processes such as gene transcription and for artificial processes such as PCR. A prototypical model for studying the denaturation of DNA upon heating is the Poland-Scheraga (PS) model, which exhibits quite a unique kind of phase transition. In this talk I will give a brief introduction to the PS model, and then I will discuss the denaturation of circular DNA, like the one found in plasmids. I will present a generalization of the PS model which accounts for the topological constraint, and discuss how the topological constraint changes the nature of the phase transition.