Bending
DNA is a relatively rigid polymer, typically modelled as a worm-like chain. It has three significant degrees of freedom; bending, twisting and compression, each of which cause particular limitations on what is possible with DNA within a cell. Twisting/torsional stiffness is important for the circularisation of DNA and the orientation of DNA bound proteins relative to each other and bending/axial stiffness is important for DNA wrapping and circularisation and protein interactions. Compression/extension is relatively unimportant in the absence of high tension.
Read more about this topic: Nucleic Acid Double Helix
Famous quotes containing the word bending:
“Sometimes we sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds overhead, watching the receding shores and the motions of our sail; the play of its pulse so like our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective; now bending to some generous impulse of the breeze, and then fluttering and flapping with a kind of human suspense.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The train rounds, bending to a scream,
Taking the final level for the dive
Under the river—”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;”
—James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)