Self-consistent phonon theory of mean-field hydrogen-bond melting of poly(dG)-poly(dC)

A modified self-consistent phonon theory based on the Green’s-function method is developed and is applied to a melting of the hydrogen bonds in DNA polymer poly(dG)-poly(dC), where dG refers to repeating guanine bases on one strand and dC the repeating cytosine bases on the other strand. The model predicts melting at 380 K. The calculation has no parameters adjusted to fit the melting and the hydrogen-bond potentials are adjusted to fit data of vibrational modes of DNA at room temperature.