Physical Society Colloquium

DNA as a model (and useful) polymer

Kevin D. Dorfman

Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
University of Minnesota

DNA is the material of life, encoding a cell’s instructions within its genetic code. That code is stored in a sequence of nucleotides that are linked by chemical bonds into the famous double-helix; this means that DNA is also a polymer. My group uses DNA as a model system to learn about polymer physics, and we also leverage that physical knowledge to improve next-generation genomics technologies. We have also turned this problem on its head, using the massive throughput available in genomics devices to learn new things about the physics of DNA.

This presentation will provide an overview of this approach to polymer physics in the context of the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics of DNA in nanochannel confinement. The first part will explore how simulation and experiments led to establishment of the fundamental principles of nanochannel-confined DNA and the impact of the resulting theory on genome mapping technologies. The second part will highlight recent work that leverages the power of nanofabricated devices and DNA as a model system to understand the transport of knotted polymers.