Publications by authors named "George D Watson"
Structural interplay between DNA-shape protein recognition and supercoiling: The case of IHF.
Comput Struct Biotechnol J
September 2022
The integration host factor (IHF) is a prominent example of indirect readout as it imposes one of the strongest bends on relaxed linear DNA. However, the relation between IHF and torsionally constrained DNA, as occurs physiologically, remains unclear. By using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations on DNA minicircles, we reveal, for the first time, the reciprocal influence between a DNA-bending protein and supercoiling.
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- Nucleoid-associated proteins (NAPs), like Integration Host Factor (IHF), play a key role in organizing prokaryotic DNA and regulating gene activity.
- IHF significantly bends DNA at specific sequences relevant to transcription and recombination while also compacting DNA non-specifically.
- Recent studies reveal that IHF binds DNA in three distinct modes—'associated', 'half-wrapped', and 'fully-wrapped'—with only the 'fully-wrapped' mode being sequence-specific, suggesting a complex mechanism for how NAPs facilitate DNA organization.