CAREER NETWORK World's one of the largest Research Career Network Benefits Academic & Industry jobs Project funding Visiting faculty positions Visiting scientist positions Invited talks and more... Register FREE Physics Express 2013, 3: 18 Research Article Force induced unzipping of dsDNA: The solvent effect Amar Singh, Bhaskar Mittal, Navin Singh Department of Physics, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani - 333 031, Rajasthan, India Abstract The salt concentration of the solution plays an important role in the stabilization of double stranded DNA (dsDNA) molecule. In our work, the Hamiltonian in Peyrard-Bishop Dauxois (PBD) model of a heterogeneous chain has been modified with a stabilizing solvent interaction term. This term strengthens the base pair dissociation energy and stabilizes the hydrogen bonds between complementary strands of dsDNA. To study the effect of salt concentration we have modified the potentials appearing in this model. We investigated the influence of salt concentration on the force required to unzip the chain. The force induced unzipping is studied in both constant extension ensemble (CEE) and constant force ensemble (CFE). We found that the results are independent of choice of the ensembles and are in good agreement with the experimental results. Keywords Double stranded DNA; DNA unzipping; Peyrard-Bishop Dauxois model; Constant extension ensemble; Constant force ensemble