Michel Peyrard
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France
 

DNA is not only a molecule essential for biologists. It also raises fundamental questions for physics. It is now clear that the stati}structure of biological molecules is not sufficient to determine their biological functions. In DNA local large amplitude opening of base pairs are necessary for the transcription of the genetic code, involving highly nonlinear dynamical phenomena.

Modeling DNA is necessary to understand and analyze these phenomena, but the models must be tested and calibrated against experiments. Thermal denaturation of DNA, which is a well controlled physical process provides a first test, but new results, which take advantage of current experimental possibilities to investigate the dynamics of DNA opening and self assembly at the microscopic scale, provide new data that we are beginning to include in the model-design process. We introduce simple models of DNA and discuss their validity in relation to physical and biological experimental results on DNA.