TABLE 3.

Destabilization effects of monovalent salt on the bent DNA state relative to the straight one as a function of solvent salt concentration

Salt concentration, M	10.0	1.0	0.4	0.2	0.1	0.05	0.01
Debye screening length, Å	1.0	3.1	5.0	7.0	10.0	14.1	31.6
ΔΔG, kcal/mol	0.0	0.0	1.85	1.48	3.22	5.19	19.17

The bent state corresponds to an average of the 100 conformations represented by x and the straight state corresponds to the average of the 100 conformations represented by * in Fig. 6. Progressively higher values of ΔΔG indicate decreasing relative stability of the bent conformations as ionic strength of the solution decreases. Computational details are in Methods.