Some Effective Tight-Binding Models for Electrons in DNA Conduction: A Review

TL;DR

This review discusses recent tight-binding models for electron conduction in DNA, focusing on energy band structures, localization properties, and charge transfer mechanisms in various DNA sequences and models.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of tight-binding models applied to DNA conduction, including analysis of localization and charge transfer in realistic and artificial sequences.

Findings

Localization properties vary among DNA sequences.

Charge transfer depends on sequence and coupling effects.

Long-range correlations influence electronic states.

Abstract

Quantum transport for DNA conduction has widely studied with interest in application as a candidate in making nanowires as well as interest in the scientific mechanism. In this paper, we review recent works with concerning the electronic states and the conduction/transfer in DNA polymers. We have mainly investigated the energy band structure and the correlation effects of localization property in the two- and three-chain systems (ladder model) with long-range correlation as a simple model for electronic property in a double strand of DNA by using the tight-binding model. In addition, we investigated the localization properties of electronic states in several actual DNA sequences such as bacteriophages of Escherichia coli, human-chromosome 22, compared with those of the artificial disordered sequences with correlation. The charge transfer properties for poly(dA)-poly(dT) and poly(dG)-poly(dC) DNA polymers are also presented in terms of localization lengths within the frameworks of the polaron models due to the coupling between the charge carriers and the lattice vibrations of the double strand of DNA.