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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 94 » Issue 17
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 178102 (2005) [4 pages]

Optical Conductivity of Wet DNA

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A. Hübsch1, R. G. Endres2, D. L. Cox1,3,4, and R. R. P. Singh1,3
1Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA
2NEC Laboratories America, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA
3Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA
4Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California, San Diego, California 92119, USA

Received 10 January 2005; published 3 May 2005

Motivated by recent experiments, we study the optical conductivity of DNA in its natural environment containing water molecules and counterions. Our density functional theory calculations (using Siesta) for four base pair B-DNA with order 250 surrounding water molecules suggest a thermally activated doping of the DNA by water states which generically leads to an electronic contribution to low-frequency absorption. The main contributions to the doping result from water near DNA ends, breaks, or nicks and are thus potentially associated with temporal or structural defects in the DNA.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.178102
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.178102
PACS:
87.14.Gg, 87.15.Aa, 87.15.Mi
 
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