Force Induced Unzipping of DNA with Long Range Correlated Noise

TL;DR

This paper models DNA unzipping under force considering long-range correlated noise, deriving a Fokker-Planck equation to analyze how correlations affect the stability and unzipping behavior of DNA.

Contribution

It provides an analytical solution for the stationary distribution of DNA unzipping with arbitrary autocorrelation functions, including long-range correlations, extending previous models.

Findings

Long-range correlations stabilize DNA against unzipping.

Average unzipped base pairs remain finite at critical force with long-range noise.

Results agree with numerical simulations of correlated noise.

Abstract

We derive and solve a Fokker-Planck equation for the stationary distribution of the free energy, in a model of unzipping of double-stranded DNA under external force. The autocorrelation function of the random DNA sequence can be a general form, including long range correlations. In the case of Orstein-Uhlenbeck noise, characterized by a finite correlation length, our result reduces to the exact result of Allahverdyan et al, with the average number of unzipped base pairs going as <X>~1/f^2 in the white noise limit, where f is the deviation from the critical force. In the case of long range correlated noise, where the integrated autocorrelation is divergent, we find that <X> is finite at f=0, with its value decreasing as the correlations become longer range. This shows that long range correlations actually stabilize the DNA sequence against unzipping. Our result is also in agreement with the findings of Allahverdyan et al, obtained using numerical generation of the long range correlated noise.