Abstract:

DNA denaturation by thermal melting is critical for DNA amplification and detection. However， the uneven heat distribution and temperature change hinders its application in DNA amplification and detection. It's highly desired to explore a fast and efficient approach to regulating DNA degeneration. In this paper， we propose to apply acid， instead of thermal melting， to accelerate the DNA denaturation by regulating DNA conformation quickly and precisely via protonation of cytosine. We find that the thermodynamic properties of DNA highly depend on its molecular conformation. Furthermore， compared with traditional thermal method， pH method significantly increases the rate of DNA denaturation by more than 6 times. We further found that the mechanism of the pH control method to improve DNA denaturation by rapidly decreasing the enthalpy of double-stranded DNA （160 kJ/mol）， and hope that this method can be used in applications of DNA amplification and detection.

Key words: DNA conformation, DNA dissociation, pH