The thermodynamics and kinetics of DNA oligonucleotide hybridization and dehybridization are often assumed to involve an all-or-nothing two-state dissociation pathway, but deviations from this behavior can be considerable even for short sequences.  We introduce a new strategy to characterize the base-pair-specific thermal dissociation mechanism of DNA oligonucleotides through steady-state and time-resolved infrared spectroscopy. 
THERM