The statistics of superhelicity

Craig J. Benham

doi:10.1016/0022-2836(78)90084-0

The statistics of superhelicity

Craig J. Benham

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

The distribution of the writhing number (also called the superhelix number or the superhelicity) is estimated for a population of nicked-circular or linear DNA molecules. The molecules are modeled as being composed of N straight segments joined by universal joints. It is shown that the writhing number for such a structure is approximately normally distributed. The variance Var(Wr) of this distribution is evaluated for N = 5 to 30 in both the linear and the nicked-circular cases. This analysis does not apply to closed circular molecules because there writhing and twisting are coupled.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	361-370
Number of pages	10
Journal	Journal of Molecular Biology
Volume	123
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-2836(78)90084-0
State	Published - 15 Aug 1978
Externally published	Yes

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title = "The statistics of superhelicity",

abstract = "The distribution of the writhing number (also called the superhelix number or the superhelicity) is estimated for a population of nicked-circular or linear DNA molecules. The molecules are modeled as being composed of N straight segments joined by universal joints. It is shown that the writhing number for such a structure is approximately normally distributed. The variance Var(Wr) of this distribution is evaluated for N = 5 to 30 in both the linear and the nicked-circular cases. This analysis does not apply to closed circular molecules because there writhing and twisting are coupled.",

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N2 - The distribution of the writhing number (also called the superhelix number or the superhelicity) is estimated for a population of nicked-circular or linear DNA molecules. The molecules are modeled as being composed of N straight segments joined by universal joints. It is shown that the writhing number for such a structure is approximately normally distributed. The variance Var(Wr) of this distribution is evaluated for N = 5 to 30 in both the linear and the nicked-circular cases. This analysis does not apply to closed circular molecules because there writhing and twisting are coupled.

AB - The distribution of the writhing number (also called the superhelix number or the superhelicity) is estimated for a population of nicked-circular or linear DNA molecules. The molecules are modeled as being composed of N straight segments joined by universal joints. It is shown that the writhing number for such a structure is approximately normally distributed. The variance Var(Wr) of this distribution is evaluated for N = 5 to 30 in both the linear and the nicked-circular cases. This analysis does not apply to closed circular molecules because there writhing and twisting are coupled.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/0018162844

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SN - 0022-2836

VL - 123

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EP - 370

JO - Journal of Molecular Biology

JF - Journal of Molecular Biology

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ER -

The statistics of superhelicity

Abstract

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