FIG. 8.

Behavior of supercoiled DNA in the presence of curl-binding proteins. Calculations are shown for f = 0.5 pN, 150 mM salt, and βμ = 10. The presence of the curl-binding proteins stabilizes the curls and drives formation of many curls at the buckling transition. Extension as a function of ΔLk is shown as the solid curve in (a); torque is shown as the solid curve in (b); dashed curves indicate results without curl-binding proteins from Fig. 5. Curl (〈n〉, solid) and plectoneme (〈m〉, dashed) numbers are shown in (c) for the curl-binding protein case; the corresponding interwound length per plectoneme (〈L_p/m〉) is shown in (d).