1998/02/24 by Alessandro Campa, Campa, Alessandro, Andrea Giansanti +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #DNA and Nucleic Acid Chemistry #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Protein Structure and Dynamics #Quantitative Biology (q-bio) #physics.bio-ph #q-bio
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/9802043
8 pages, Latex, 1 figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. E
arxiv created 1998/02/24 · openalex publication_date 1998/02/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The melting curves of short heterogeneous DNA chains in solution are calculated on the basis of statistical thermodynamics and compared to experiments. The computation of the partition function is based on the Peyrard-Bishop hamiltonian, which has already been adopted in the theoretical description of the melting of long DNA chains. In the case of short chains it is necessary to consider not only the breaking of the hydrogen bonds between single base pairs, but also the complete dissociation of the two strands forming the double helix.