| Abstract: | We have estimated the absorption of microwave radiation by the four acoustic modes of poly(dG)·poly(dC) in B conformation. The eigenvectors used in this calculation are those obtained from a refined normal coordinate analysis by fitting the velocity of the longitudinal acoustic mode to that observed by Brillouin scattering. The acoustic modes couple to the radiation field when translational invariance is broken such as for finite segments of helix and as may be the case in vivo. Calculations for various helix lengths show that the estimated absorption is greater than that of water by at least two to three orders of magnitude in some cases. |
