Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-biological-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/4/f/solution

For ideal freely mobile counterions, their gross osmotic pressure is
If the DNA volume is excluded from the ion-accessible volume, use instead, giving . These are ideal-ion estimates; bound counterions contribute less like independent mobile particles, and the net outward osmotic pressure also subtracts the external osmotic contribution.
Stored free energy associated with this pressure, together with bending and interstrand repulsion, can favor initial genome release when a delivery pathway becomes available. This explains a possible mechanical benefit of dense packaging at a conceptual level. It does not imply that internal pressure necessarily supplies all the work of complete genome delivery into a host, whose own environment and interactions also matter.

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