Estimation of DNA persistence length with atomic force microscopy imaging

Abstract

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) captures Nano-scale resolution biopolymers with relative ease, and has been used to image many string-like biopolymer samples such as DNA. This research proposes a standard method to calculate the persistence length(s) of DNA samples, imaged by AFM. Both simulated DNA through Worm-Like Chain (WLC) modeling and DNA images scanned from actual AFM systems are used to demonstrate the efficacy of this method. Where both the estimate DNA contour length and turning angles of the biopolymer are based on digitized images, showing high correlation results through statistical analysis.