6,170 research outputs found
Anharmonic Torsional Stiffness of DNA Revealed under Small External Torques
DNA supercoiling plays an important role in a variety of cellular processes.
The torsional stress related with supercoiling may be also involved in gene
regulation through the local structure and dynamics of the double helix. To
check this possibility steady torsional stress was applied to DNA in the course
of all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. It is found that small static
untwisting significantly reduces the torsional persistence length () of
GC-alternating DNA. For the AT-alternating sequence a smaller effect of the
opposite sign is observed. As a result, the measured values are similar
under zero stress, but diverge with untwisting. The effect is traced to
sequence-specific asymmetry of local torsional fluctuations, and it should be
small in long random DNA due to compensation. In contrast, the stiffness of
special short sequences can vary significantly, which gives a simple
possibility of gene regulation via probabilities of strong fluctuations. These
results have important implications for the role of local DNA twisting in
complexes with transcription factors.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Are There Topological Black Hole Solitons in String Theory?
We point out that the celebrated Hawking effect of quantum instability of
black holes seems to be related to a nonperturbative effect in string theory.
Studying quantum dynamics of strings in the gravitational background of black
holes we find classical instability due to emission of massless string
excitations. The topology of a black hole seems to play a fundamental role in
developing the string theory classical instability due to the effect of sigma
model instantons. We argue that string theory allows for a qualitative
description of black holes with very small masses and it predicts topological
solitons with quantized spectrum of masses. These solitons would not decay into
string massless excitations but could be pair created and may annihilate also.
Semiclassical mass quantization of topological solitons in string theory is
based on the argument showing existence of nontrivial zeros of beta function of
the renormalization group.Comment: 12 pages, TeX, requires phyzzx.tex, published in Gen. Rel. Grav. 19
(1987) 1173; comment added on December 18, 199
Equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamics of particle-stabilized thin liquid films
Our recent quasi-two-dimensional thermodynamic description of thin-liquid
films stabilized by colloidal particles is generalized to describe nonuniform
equilibrium states of films in external potentials and nonequilibrium transport
processes produced in the film by gradients of thermodynamic forces. Using a
Monte--Carlo simulation method, we have determined equilibrium equations of
state for a film stabilized by a suspension of hard spheres. Employing a
multipolar-expansion method combined with a flow-reflection technique, we have
also evaluated the short-time film-viscosity coefficients and collective
particle mobility.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure
A dynamical model for the heavily ram pressure stripped Virgo spiral galaxy NGC 4522
A dynamical model including ram pressure stripping is applied to the strongly
HI deficient Virgo spiral galaxy NGC 4522. A carefully chosen model snapshot is
compared with existing VLA HI observations. The model successfully reproduces
the large-scale gas distribution and the velocity field. However it fails to
reproduce the large observed HI linewidths in the extraplanar component, for
which we give possible explanations. In a second step, we solve the induction
equation on the velocity fields of the dynamical model and calculate the large
scale magnetic field. Assuming a Gaussian distribution of relativistic
electrons we obtain the distribution of polarized radio continuum emission
which is also compared with our VLA observations at 6 cm. The observed maximum
of the polarized radio continuum emission is successfully reproduced. Our model
suggests that the ram pressure maximum occurred only ~50 Myr ago. Since NGC
4522 is located far away from the cluster center (~1 Mpc) where the
intracluster medium density is too low to cause the observed stripping if the
intracluster medium is static and smooth, two scenarios are envisaged: (i) the
galaxy moves very rapidly within the intracluster medium and is not even bound
to the cluster; in this case the galaxy has just passed the region of highest
intracluster medium density; (ii) the intracluster medium is not static but
moving due to the infall of the M49 group of galaxies. In this case the galaxy
has just passed the region of highest intracluster medium velocity. This study
shows the strength of combining high resolution HI and polarized radio
continuum emission with detailed numerical modeling of the evolution of the gas
and the large-scale magnetic field.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&
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