Brownian Dynamics Studies on DNA Gel Electrophoresis. II. `Defect' Dynamics in the Elongation-Contraction Motion

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By means of the Brownian dynamics (BD) method of simulations we have developed, we study dynamics of individual DNA undergoing constant field gel electrophoresis (CFGE), focusing on the relevance of the `defect' concept due to de Gennes in CFGE. The corresponding embodiment, which we call slack beads (s-beads) is explicitly introduced in our BD model. In equilibrium under a vanishing field the distance between s-beads and their hopping range are found to be randomly distributed following a Poisson distribution. In the strong field range, where a chain undergoes the elongation-contraction motion, s-beads are observed to be alternatively annihilated in elongation and created in contraction of the chain. On the other hand, the distribution of hopping range of s-beads does not differ much from that in equilibrium. The results indicate that the motion of the chain elongated consists of a huge number of random movements of s-beads. We have also confirmed that these features of s-beads agree qualitatively with those of s-monomers in the extended bond fluctuation model (EBFM) which we recently proposed. The coincidence of the two simulations strongly supports the stochastic semi-local movement of s-monomers which we a priori introduced into the EBFM.