Extended Data Fig. 4: Directly observed versus computed rate of rotation of a finite 16-bp duplex.

The rate of rotation observed in the applied electric field simulations, Fig. 1c of the main text, is plotted versus the rotation rate calculated using two estimates of the angular mobility μ and the direct measurement of the torque under electric field, Fig. 2d. The torque per base pair was estimated from the applied field strength using the linear regression fit to the data, Fig. 2d. The rotation rate ω was calculated from the definition of mobility, μ = ω/τ, where τ is the torque on the duplex. Two strategies were used to determine the mobility: using the slope of the mean squared angular displacement as a function of lag time, Extended Data Fig. 3, and directly using the mobility determined from a linear regression fit to rotation rate due to a constant applied torque, Fig. 2e. We attribute slight deviations of the data from perfect agreement (dashed gray line) to a statistical error in determining the effective torque per base pair from Fig. 2d.