Why is the DNA Denaturation Transition First Order?

Abstract

We study a model for the denaturation transition of DNA in which the molecules are considered as being composed of a sequence of alternating bound segments and denaturated loops. We take into account the excluded-volume interactions between denaturated loops and the rest of the chain by exploiting recent results on scaling properties of polymer networks of arbitrary topology. The phase transition is found to be first order in $d\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}2$ dimensions and above, in agreement with experiments and at variance with previous theoretical results, in which only excluded-volume interactions within denaturated loops were taken into account. Our results agree with recent numerical simulations.