The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
PicoNewton-Millisecond Force Steps Reveal the Transition Kinetics and Mechanism of the Double-Stranded DNA Elongation
Open accessAbstract
We study the kinetics of the overstretching transition in λ-phage double-stranded (ds) DNA from the basic conformation (B state) to the 1.7-times longer and partially unwound conformation (S state), using the dual-laser optical tweezers under force-clamp conditions at 25°C. The unprecedented resolution of our piezo servo-system, which can impose millisecond force steps of 0.5-2 pN, reveals the exponential character of the elongation kinetics and allows us to test the two-state nature of the B-S transition mechanism. By analyzing the load-dependence of the rate constant of the elongation, we find that the elementary elongation step is 5.85 nm, indicating a cooperativity of ~25 basepairs. This mechanism increases the free energy for the elementary reaction to ~94 k(B)T, accounting for the stability of the basic conformation of DNA, and explains why ds-DNA can remain in equilibrium as it overstretches.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“The 12 pN partitioning force used in our simulations exceeds thermal forces, which are typically considered to be below 10 pN.79”
From Bringing the genetically minimal cell to life on a computer in 4D (2026) · cites this paper as [79]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Smith, S. B., Cui, Y., & Bustamante, C. (1996) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.271.5250.795 · Cited by 2,770
Marko, J. F., & Siggia, E. D. (1995) · Macromolecules · doi:10.1021/ma00130a008 · Cited by 2,307
Entropic Elasticity of λ-Phage DNA
Bustamante, C., Marko, J. F., Siggia, E. D., & Smith, S. (1994) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.8079175 · Cited by 2,154
Direct Mechanical Measurements of the Elasticity of Single DNA Molecules by Using Magnetic Beads
Smith, S. B., Finzi, L., & Bustamante, C. (1992) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1439819 · Cited by 1,817
Ten years of tension: single-molecule DNA mechanics
Bustamante, C., Bryant, Z., & Smith, S. B. (2003) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature01405 · Cited by 1,303
The Elasticity of a Single Supercoiled DNA Molecule
Strick, T. R., Allemand, J.-F., Bensimon, D., Bensimon, A., & Croquette, V. (1996) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.271.5257.1835 · Cited by 1,260
Ionic effects on the elasticity of single DNA molecules
Baumann, C. G., Smith, S. B., Bloomfield, V. A., & Bustamante, C. (1997) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.94.12.6185 · Cited by 1,001
Cluzel, P., Lebrun, A., Heller, C., Lavery, R., Viovy, J.-L., Chatenay, D., & Caron, F. (1996) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.271.5250.792 · Cited by 986
Estimating the Persistence Length of a Worm-Like Chain Molecule from Force-Extension Measurements
Bouchiat, C., Wang, M. D., Allemand, J.-F., Strick, T., Block, S. M., & Croquette, V. (1999) · Biophysical Journal · doi:10.1016/s0006-3495(99)77207-3 · Cited by 696
Structural transitions and elasticity from torque measurements on DNA
Bryant, Z., Stone, M. D., Gore, J., Smith, S. B., Cozzarelli, N. R., & Bustamante, C. (2003) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature01810 · Cited by 575
Cited by
Bringing the genetically minimal cell to life on a computer in 4D
Thornburg, Z. R., Maytin, A., Kwon, J., Brier, T. A., Gilbert, B. R., Fu, E., Gao, Y.-L., Quenneville, J., Wu, T., Li, H., et al. (2026) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.02.009 · Cited by 44
Metadata
- Authors
- Bianco, P., Bongini, L., Melli, L., Dolfi, M., & Lombardi, V.
- Affiliations
- University of Florence (IT)
- Universitat de Barcelona (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Lombardi, Vincenzo
- Venue
- Biophysical Journal
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2011-08
- Volume
- 101
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 866-874
- ISSN
- 0006-3495 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3175059
- OpenAlex
- W2020135045
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 3 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 2.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (vor, 715 d)
- Locations
- Biophysical Journal (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Florence Research (University of Florence) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › DNA and Nucleic Acid Chemistry
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques
- Keywords
- DNA overstretching, b to s transitions, double-stranded DNA, force clamp, optical tweezers, two-state transition, cooperativity, free energy, lambda phage DNA, single-molecule force spectroscopy
- MeSH terms
- Biomechanical Phenomena, Computer Simulation, DNA, DNA, Viral, Kinetics, Bacteriophage lambda, Thermodynamics, Time Factors
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: PicoNewton-Millisecond Force Steps Reveal the Transition Kinetics and Mechanism of the Double-Stranded DNA Elongation. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.bpj.2011.06.039
- The paper
- Bianco, P., Bongini, L., Melli, L., Dolfi, M., & Lombardi, V. (2011). PicoNewton-Millisecond Force Steps Reveal the Transition Kinetics and Mechanism of the Double-Stranded DNA Elongation. Biophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2011.06.039
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
