- Investigating the Effects of Gyrase-Binding on the Topology of DNA
- Project Year:
2025
- REU Student (s):
Sophie Dove | University of Massachusetts-Amherst MA
- Student 1 Institution:
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
- Project Mentor:
Wilma Olson
- Project Mentor Area:
Chemistry and Chemical Biology
- Project Abstract:
Deoxyribonucelic Acid (DNA) follows a particular biological and mathematical structure. It constantly interacts with enzymes, such as DNA gyrase, which plays an essential role during transcription. There are many mathematical quantities that allow us to understand the topology of a DNA structure. With recent development in chemical and biological modeling software, a program called emDNA allows us to visualize DNA at both the base-pair step and global level. With this software and previously published gyrase-bound structure, we explored the effects of gyrase-binding on the topology of DNA minicircles. We concluded that gyrase generally causes distortion for certain minicircle lengths and with particular structural features, gyrase can cause minicircles to supercoil where high levels of torsion stress are involved.
