2009/02/20 by M Manosas, Maria Manosas, Alessandro Mossa +7 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Action (physics) #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #DNA and Nucleic Acid Chemistry #Dissipation #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Force spectroscopy #Fragility #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Optical tweezers #Path (computing) #Work (physics) #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.BM #q-bio.QM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2009/02/p02061
published as J. Stat. Mech. (2009) P02061 · 28 pages, 12 figures
arxiv created 2009/02/20 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We investigate irreversibility and dissipation in single molecules that cooperatively fold/unfold in a two-state manner under the action of mechanical force. We apply path thermodynamics to derive analytical expressions for the average dissipated work and the average hopping number in two-state systems. It is shown how these quantities only depend on two parameters that characterize the folding/unfolding kinetics of the molecule: the fragility and the coexistence hopping rate. The latter has to be rescaled to take into account the appropriate experimental set-up. Finally we carry out pulling experiments with optical tweezers in a specifically designed DNA hairpin that shows two-state cooperative folding. We then use these experimental results to validate our theoretical predictions.