APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 84 » Issue 11

Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 2537 - 2540 (2000)

Twist in Chiral Interaction between Biological Helices
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A. A. Kornyshev
Research Center “Jülich,” D-52425 Jülich, Germany
and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106

S. Leikin *
Laboratory of Physical and Structural Biology, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Received 3 August 1999

Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ∼sqrt[RH]/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the closest distance between their axes, and H is the helical pitch. Estimates based on this formula suggest a solution for the puzzle of small interaxial angles in α-helix bundles and in cholesteric phases of DNA.


©2000 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v84/p2537
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.2537
PACS: 87.15.-v

* To whom reprint requests should be addressed; (Bldg. 12A, Rm. 2041, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892).Email address: leikin@helix.nih.gov

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