Thermal conductivity of B-DNA

TL;DR

This study uses full atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to accurately measure the thermal conductivity of B-DNA across various temperatures, revealing insights into denaturation and thermal properties.

Contribution

It employs full atomistic simulations instead of simplified models to analyze B-DNA's thermal conductivity and denaturation behavior.

Findings

Thermal conductivity of B-DNA at room temperature is approximately 1.5 W/m·K.

Thermal conductivity decreases to about 1.225 W/m·K in non-equilibrium conditions.

Denaturation temperature of B-DNA aligns with previous models at around 350 K.

Abstract

The thermal conductivity of B-form double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) of the Drew-Dickerson sequence d(CGCGAATTCGCG) is computed using classical Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. In contrast to previous studies, which focus on a simplified 1D model or a coarse-grained model of DNA to improve simulation times, full atomistic simulations are employed to understand the thermal conduction in B-DNA. Thermal conductivity at different temperatures from 100 to 400 K are investigated using the Einstein Green-Kubo equilibrium and M\"uller-Plathe non-equilibrium formalisms. The thermal conductivity of B-DNA at room temperature is found to be 1.5 W/m$\cdot$K in equilibrium and 1.225 W/m$\cdot$K in non-equilibrium approach. In addition, the denaturation regime of B-DNA is obtained from the variation of thermal conductivity with temperature. It is in agreement with previous works using Peyrard-Bishop Dauxois (PBD) model at a temperature of around 350 K. The quantum heat capacity ($C_{vq}$) has given the additional clues regarding the Debye and denaturation temperature of 12-bp B-DNA.