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Biophysics

Melting the double helix

Nature Physics volume 2, pages 13–14 (2006)Cite this article

The melting temperatures of the base-pair sequences in DNA are difficult to predict. But applying statistical physics to the problem has created an 'index' that well represents the molecule's thermal properties.

Understanding these thermal properties of DNA is relevant to many practical applications in genetics — such as in optimizing the polymerase chain reaction, which is used to generate unlimited copies of any fragment of DNA, and improving the efficiency of DNA microarray analysis to study gene activation. However, the physics of DNA melting is a challenging problem, first addressed 40 years ago1 and still under active study today. On page 55 of this issue, Weber and colleagues2 introduce an original viewpoint. They suggest that, to compare the thermal properties of two DNA sequences, there is no need to compute their melting temperatures. Instead, an index can be readily obtained for a given sequence of base pairs that characterizes its properties with good accuracy.

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Figure 1: The melting of DNA.

References

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  1. Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 allée d'Italie, Lyon, 69364, Cedex O7, France

    Michel Peyrard

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  1. Michel Peyrard
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Peyrard, M. Melting the double helix. Nature Phys 2, 13–14 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys197

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