Influence of the sequence on elastic properties of long DNA chains

We revisit the results of single-molecule DNA stretching experiments using a rodlike chain (RLC) model that explicitly includes some intrinsic structural disorder induced by the sequence. The investigation of artificial and real genomic sequences shows that the wormlike chain model reproduces quite well the data but with an effective bend stiffness A_eff, which underestimates the true elastic bend stiffness A, independently of the elastic twist stiffness C. Mainly dominated by the amplitude of the structural disorder, this correction seems rather insensitive to the presence of long-range correlations. This RLC model is shown to remarkably fit the experimental data for λ-DNA when considering A≃70±10nm (>A_eff≃50nm), in good agreement with previous experimental estimates of the “dynamic” persistent length. From the analysis of large human contigs, we speculate about the possible dependence of A_eff and/or A upon the (G+C) content of the considered sequence.