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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jan 23.
Published in final edited form as: Methods Enzymol. 2011;492:27–59. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-381268-1.00014-8

Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1

Microstates for DNA on a surface. (A) Fluorescence microscopy image of dye-labeled λ-phage DNA on a surface (Maier and Radler, 1999). Each configuration observed corresponds to a different microstate. (B) Schematic showing a series of different allowed microstates for a given DNA molecule on a surface. (C) Discrete representation of the microstate of the DNA molecule. The molecule is divided into a series of segments and there is a vector ri which points to the ith segment. Each microstate is characterized by a different set of positions. (D) Continuous representation of the microstate of the DNA molecule. Each point on the molecule has its position defined by the vector r(s), where s is the arclength along the molecule.