{"doi":"10.1126/science.1224139","title":"Extreme Bendability of DNA Less than 100 Base Pairs Long Revealed by Single-Molecule Cyclization","abstract":"The classical view of DNA posits that DNA must be stiff below the persistence length [<150 base pairs (bp)], but recent studies addressing this have yielded contradictory results. We developed a fluorescence-based, protein-free assay for studying the cyclization of single DNA molecules in real time. The assay samples the equilibrium population of a sharply bent, transient species that is entirely suppressed in single-molecule mechanical measurements and is biologically more relevant than the annealed species sampled in the traditional ligase-based assay. The looping rate has a weak length dependence between 67 and 106 bp that cannot be described by the worm-like chain model. Many biologically important protein-DNA interactions that involve looping and bending of DNA below 100 bp likely use this intrinsic bendability of DNA.","journal":"Science","year":2012,"id":1951,"datarank":0.8609689368268852,"base_score":5.739792912179234,"endowment":5.739792912179234,"self_citation_contribution":0.8609689368268852,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.8609689368268852,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":310,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0393,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2012-08-31","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":22168,"name":"Taekjip Ha","orcid":"0000-0003-2195-6258","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":22167,"name":"Reza Vafabakhsh","orcid":"0000-0001-8384-3203","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}