International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
Volume 6 (1983), Issue 4, Pages 767-781
doi:10.1155/S0161171283000654

Propagation of elastic waves in DNA

Sunil Mukherjee,1 Saumyendra Nath Sarkar,1 Probhas Raychaudhuri,2 and Sunil Kumar Mazumdar3

1Department of Physics, Biophysics Section, University of Calcutta, Calcutta 700 009, India
2Department of Applied Mathematics, Calcutta University, Calcutta 700 009, India
3Crystallograph and Molecular Biology Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Calcutta 700 009, India

Received 1 March 1982

Copyright © 1983 Sunil Mukherjee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The mathematical analyses of longitudinal and torsional elastic waves transmitted along DNA molecule undergoing Brownian motion in solution are presented. Longitudinal vibrations in DNA are shown to be responsible for drug intercalation and breathing. The near neighbor exclusion mode of drug intercalation is explained. Torsional oscillations in DNA are shown to be responsible for conformation transitions from a right handed to a left handed form, depending on sequence specificity in high salt concentration.