Toward a Local Manipulation of DNA by Quantum Fields

Abstract

Hydrogen bonds are the fundamental backbone for deoxyribo-nucleic acid (DNA) stability. In this Letter we investigate a new strategy based on plasmonic cavities to perform manipulation of hydrogen bonds in DNA. The analysis is performed using state-of-the-art Quantum Electrodynamics Coupled Cluster (QED-CC) calculations. We investigate whether in the strong coupling regime modifications of the nucleotide bases’ interactions can be induced in a totally nonintrusive manner. Our strategy proposes an alternative approach to methodologies based on a collective coupling to perform optical DNA manipulation.