Unraveling siRNA unzipping kinetics with graphene

Mogurampelly, Santosh and Panigrahi, Swati and Bhattacharyya, Dhananjay and Sood, AK and Maiti, Prabal K (2012) Unraveling siRNA unzipping kinetics with graphene. In: Journal of Chemical Physics, 137 (5). 054903-1.

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Abstract

Using all atom molecular dynamics simulations, we report spontaneous unzipping and strong binding of small interfering RNA (siRNA) on graphene. Our dispersion corrected density functional theory based calculations suggest that nucleosides of RNA have stronger attractive interactions with graphene as compared to DNA residues. These stronger interactions force the double stranded siRNA to spontaneously unzip and bind to the graphene surface. Unzipping always nucleates at one end of the siRNA and propagates to the other end after few base-pairs get unzipped. While both the ends get unzipped, the middle part remains in double stranded form because of torsional constraint. Unzipping probability distributions fitted to single exponential function give unzipping time (tau) of the order of few nanoseconds which decrease exponentially with temperature. From the temperature variation of unzipping time we estimate the energy barrier to unzipping. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4742189]

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Journal of Chemical Physics
Publisher:	American Institute of Physics
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to American Institute of Physics.MELVILLE, USA.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	28 Feb 2013 10:49
Last Modified:	28 Feb 2013 10:49
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/45402

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