Modelling charge transport in data DNA using transfer matrices with diagonal terms

There is increasing evidence that DNA can support a considerable degree of charge transport along the strand by hopping of holes from one base to another, and that this charge transport may be relevant to DNA regulation, damage detection and repair. A surprisingly useful amount of insight can be gained from the construction of simple tight-binding models of charge transport, which can be investigated using the transfer-matrix method. The data thus obtained indicate a correlation between DNA charge-transport properties and the locations of cancerous mutation. We review models for DNA charge transport and their extension to include more physically realistic diagonal-hopping terms.