The study of the effects associated with the electrostatic properties of DNA is of fundamental importance to understand both its molecular properties at the single molecule level, like the rigidity of the chain, and its interaction with other charged bio-molecules, including other DNA molecules; such interactions are crucial to maintain the thermodynamic stability of the intra-cellular medium. In the present work, we combine the Poisson-Boltzmann mean-field theory with an irreversible thermodynamic approximation to analyze the effects of counterion accumulation inside DNA on both the denaturation profile of the chain and the equation of state of the suspension. To this end, we model the DNA molecule as a porous charged cylinder immersed in an aqueous solution. These thermo-electrostatic effects are explicitly studied in the particular case of some genes for which damage in their sequence is associated with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
DNA damage is one of the mechanisms of mutagenesis. Sequence integrity may be affected by the action of thermal changes, chemical agents, both endogenous and exogenous, and other environmental issues. Abnormally high mutation rates are referred to as genomic instability: a phenomenon closely related to the onset of cancer. Mutant genotypes may be able to confer some kind of selective advantage on subclonal cell populations, leading them to multiply until dominance in a localized tissue environment that later becomes the tumour. Cellular stress, especially that of oxidative and ionic nature, is a recognized trigger for DNA-damaging processes. A physico-chemical model has shown that high hysteresis rates in DNA denaturation curves may be indicative of dissipative processes inducing DNA damage, thus potentially leading to uncontrolled mutagenesis and genome instability. We here study selectively to what extent this phenomenon may occur by analysing the sequence length and composition effects on the thermodynamic behaviour and the presence of hysteresis in pressure-driven DNA denaturation; pronounced hysteresis in the denaturation/renaturation curves may indicate thermal susceptibility to DNA damage. In particular, we consider highly mutated regions of the genome characterized in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma on a recent whole exome next-generation sequencing effort.
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