DNA sequence encodes the position of DNA supercoils

The three-dimensional organization of DNA is increasingly understood to play a decisive role in vital cellular processes. Many studies focus on the role of DNA-packaging proteins, crowding, and confinement in arranging chromatin, but structural information might also be directly encoded in bare DNA itself. Here, we visualize plectonemes ...

DNA binding proteins explore multiple local configurations during docking via rapid rebinding

Finding the target site and associating in a specific orientation are essential tasks for DNA-binding proteins. In order to make the target search process as efficient as possible, proteins should not only rapidly diffuse to the target site but also dynamically explore multiple local configurations before diffusing away. Protein flipping is...

Intercalation-based single-molecule fluorescence assay to study DNA supercoil dynamics

DNA supercoiling crucially affects cellular processes such as DNA replication, gene expression, and chromatin organization. However, mechanistic understanding of DNA supercoiling and the related DNA-processing enzymes has remained limited, mainly due to the lack of convenient experimental tools to probe these phenomena. Here, we report a...

Hysteresis in DNA compaction by Dps is described by an ising model

In all organisms, DNA molecules are tightly compacted into a dynamic 3D nucleoprotein complex. In bacteria, this compaction is governed by the family of nucleoid-associated proteins (NAPs). Under conditions of stress and starvation, an NAP called Dps (DNA binding protein from starved cells) becomes highly up-regulated and can massively...