Characteristic length scale of electric transport properties of genomes

Abstract

A tight-binding model together with a statistical method are used to investigate the relation between the sequence-dependent electric transport properties and the sequences of protein-coding regions of complete genomes. A correlation parameter Omega is defined to analyze the relation. For some particular propagation length w max, the transport behaviors of the coding and noncoding sequences are very different and the correlation reaches its maximal value Omega max. w max and Omega max are characteristic values for each species. A possible reason for the difference between the features of transport properties in the coding and noncoding regions is the mechanism of DNA damage repair processes together with natural selection.

Tight-Binding Modeling of Charge Migration in DNA Devices

“…Using the same sequences as Ref. [89], no support for larger ξ values in regions of coding DNA was found.…”

“…An intriguing relation between the length of a region in coding DNA versus non-coding DNA and a repeatedly higher transport characteristic in coding DNA was reported in Refs. [88,89].…”

Effect of Anderson Localization on Auger Destruction of DNA

“…The theory of Auger destruction of DNA has been modified taking into account the localized and delocalized electron states in DNA owing to the correlated disorder in a sequence of nucleotides. According to the modified theoretical model of Auger destruction, the dominant ratio of delocalized states to localized states in exon compared to intron results in stronger radiation resistance of exons to ionized irradiation causing the Auger-cascade process than the radiation resistance of introns.One of the interesting and important applications of the localization theory developed for one-dimensional systems [1][2][3][4] is related to conductivity of DNA molecules [4][5][6]. The electronic structure of DNA represents a very interesting problem by itself.…”

“…One of the interesting and important applications of the localization theory developed for one-dimensional systems [1][2][3][4] is related to conductivity of DNA molecules [4][5][6]. The electronic structure of DNA represents a very interesting problem by itself.…”

“…The presence of extended states in the spectrum of exons regions strongly supports a hypothesis that the information about DNA repair processes transfers in a damaged DNA along a nucleotide sequence due to electrical mechanisms. Since proteins detect the damaged region in a sequence by virtue of transport properties [10][11][12], it is natural that the coding regions (exons) have extended states, while this property is irrelevant for the noncoding regions (introns) [5]. One of the factors causing the point mutation in DNA is ionized radiation [13,14], which was able to ionize atoms and to break chemical bonds and disrupt the large molecules.…”