Figure 2.

Temperature dependence of the stiffness for the stretch-stretch (upper) and opening-opening (lower) diagonal terms on the A-T (A) and C-G (B) basepairs. The reduced units are defined using the average standard deviation of each parameter, ${\sigma }_i$, given in Table 1. Here, the error bars partly reflect the structural heterogeneity due to the flanking sequences. The effect of temperature is strongest in these two degrees of freedom: at room temperature, the average stiffness has decreased by ∼45% and 30%, respectively, with respect to the values at 0 K (enthalpic stiffness).