Relationship between calorimetric profiles and differential melting curves for natural DNAs

Abstract Many experiments demonstrate that regions with higher GC-content in natural DNAs unwind at higher temperatures adsorbing more heat than equivalently sized regions with lower GC-content. This simple observation implies that normalized calorimetric melting profiles (calorimetric cDMCs) will not be equivalent differential melting curves (DMCs). We propose simple expressions for long natural and random DNA sequences to reciprocally convert DMCs and corresponding calorimetric cDMCs. The expressions are confirmed by the Poland–Fixman–Freire method and an approach based upon mixtures of homopolymeric duplexes. Using these expressions and experimental calorimetric data, we demonstrate that the average relative deviation between DMC and cDMC is proportional to the temperature melting range of the helix-coil transition Δ T . Corresponding difference between melting temperatures is proportional to Δ T 2 . In general, sequence and ionic conditions influence the deviation through their effect on Δ T . On the basis of the developed approach, we propose a method to determine the thermodynamic melting temperature (ratio of calorimetric enthalpy and entropy of the helix-coil transition) for natural DNAs from optical DMCs without calorimetric experiments.