On the hole migration through DNA

The mechanism of hole migration through donor-DNA-acceptor systems is studied using a kinetic model, in which the time evolution of the hole population at guanine sites is expressed in terms of the hopping rates between neighboring guanine-cytosine (GC) base pairs. The hole hopping rates are empirically determined and effectively include all important factors of the hole migration process. We present quantitative and qualitative descriptions of hole migration along DNA by analyzing such quantities as survival probabilities, mean residence times, and mean first passage times for a number of different donor-DNA-acceptor systems. The sequence dependence and distance-dependence of the hole-migration mechanism are examined in depth for both short and long donor-DNA-acceptor systems.