Theory of ``Melting'' of the Helical Form in Double Chains of the DNA Type

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Abstract
Previous theoretical treatments of the transition between the helical and random forms of the desoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) molecule are extended to include formally the explicit consideration of the dissociation into two separate chains and the consideration of the effects of the ends of the chains. An approximate form for the fraction of base pairs that are bonded is obtained in terms of two parameters, a stability constant for base pairing and a constant representing the interaction of adjacent base pairs. The matrix method of statistical mechanics proves to be adaptable to this problem. Some numerical examples are worked out for very long molecules, for which case it is found that the effect of concentration is small.