{"doi":"10.1101/2024.02.14.579968","title":"Twist-Dependent Elastic Limits and Unwinding of Tightly Bent DNA","abstract":"Abstract DNA is under high bending and torsional strain in many biological contexts 1,2 , but elastic limits of tightly bent DNA under simultaneous torsional strain are not fully understood 3–22 . We synthesized DNA circles with all possible radii of curvature between r ≈ 2.7 – 5.7 nm in increments of Δr = 0.05 nm and defined helical repeats ranging from h ≈ 10 – 13 base pairs per helical turn. Nuclease digest reveals that DNA can be bent to r ≈ 3.0 nm without kinking, but only when h < ~10.9 bp/turn, while underwound DNA kinks irrespective of curvature. Histone proteins overwind DNA and thereby mechanically stabilize it. The natural helical repeat h 0 increases from 10.45 to >11 bp/turn due to twist-bend coupling, which is not caused by kinking before ligation. These findings require reassessing our models and the energetics of molecular mechanisms involving DNA under mechanical stress.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2024,"id":490054,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9586,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1335547,"name":"Thomas Swope","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1335317,"name":"Fatemeh Fadaei","orcid":"0009-0003-0858-459X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1335548,"name":"Rachel Bricker","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1335549,"name":"Draven Houser","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":822800,"name":"John J. Portman","orcid":"0000-0002-0400-5226","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1335550,"name":"Daniel Hollis","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":708687,"name":"Thorsten L. Schmidt","orcid":"0000-0002-6798-5241","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":951397,"name":"Soumya Chandrasekhar","orcid":"0009-0006-4192-5431","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":67,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:08:32.775003Z","pmid":"38405957","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}