DETERMINATION OF DNA MELTING CURVES AND DIFFERENTIAL MELTING CURVES FROM CALORIMETRIC DATA

Abstract

For different types of DNA sequences it is demonstrated that a calorimetric melting curve calculated as a temperature dependence of a relative heat absorbance caused by DNA helix-coil transition is very close to the “real” melting curve that is the temperature dependence of the fraction of melted base pairs. There is the same closeness for the calorimetric differential melting curves (DMC) and the values of melting temperatures and temperature melting ranges. A simple procedure of recalculation of a calorimetric DMC into a real DMC is proposed.