Mechanistic insights into the Structure and Dynamics of Entangled and Hydrated Lambda-Phage DNA

Intrinsic dynamics of DNA plays crucial role in DNA-protein interactions and has been emphasized as a possible key component for in vivo chromatin organization. We have prepared entangled DNA micro tube above the overlap concentration by exploiting the complementary cohesive ends of λ-phage DNA, which is confirmed by atomic force microscopy and agarose gel electrophoresis. Photon correlation spectroscopy further confirmed that the entangled solutions are found to exhibit the classical hydrodynamics of a single chain segment on length scales smaller than the hydrodynamic length scale of single λ-phage DNA molecule. We also observed that in 41.6% (gm water/gm DNA) hydrated state, λ-phage DNA exhibits a dynamic transition temperature (Tdt) at 187 K and a crossover temperature (Tc) at 246 K. Computational insight reveals that the observed structure and dynamics of entangled λ-phage DNA are distinctively different from the behavior of the corresponding unentangled DNA with open cohesive ends, which is reminiscent with our experimental observation.