Related papers: The search kinetics of a target inside the cell nu…
Transcription regulation is largely governed by the profile and the dynamics of transcription factors' binding to DNA. Stochastic effects are intrinsic to this dynamics and the binding to functional sites must be controled with a certain…
In many situations, simply finding a target during a search is not enough. It is equally important to be able to return to that target repeatedly or to enable a larger community to locate and utilize it. While first passage time is commonly…
Many fundamental biological processes are regulated by protein-DNA complexes called {\it synaptosomes}, which possess multiple interaction sites. Despite the critical importance of synaptosomes, the mechanisms of their formation remain not…
Nanochannels provide means for detailed experiments on the effect of confinement on biomacromolecules, such as DNA. We here introduce a model for the complete unfolding of DNA from the circular to linear configuration. Two main ingredients…
Following recent discoveries of colocalization of downstream-regulating genes in living cells, the impact of the spatial distance between such genes on the kinetics of gene product formation is increasingly recognized. We here show from…
We develop a theoretical framework on the mechanism of combinatorial binding of transcription factors (TFs) with their specific binding sites on DNA. We consider three possible mechanisms viz. monomer, hetero-oligomer and coordinated…
A random search of a partially absorbing target by a run-and-tumble particle in a confined one-dimensional space is investigated. We analytically obtain the mean searching time, which shows a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the…
The Tethered Particle Motion (TPM) technique informs about conformational changes of DNA molecules, e.g. upon looping or interaction with proteins, by tracking the Brownian motion of a particle probe tethered to a surface by a single DNA…
We show that the folding rates (k_F) of RNA are determined by N, the number of nucleotides. By assuming that the distribution of free energy barriers separating the folded and the unfolded states is Gaussian, which follows from central…
Transcription factors (TFs) are regulatory proteins that bind DNA in promoter regions of the genome and either promote or repress gene expression. Here we predict analytically that enhanced homo-oligonucleotide sequence correlations, such…
We study analytically and numerically the mean fastest first-passage time (fFPT) to an immobile target for an ensemble of $N$ independent finite-speed random searchers driven by dichotomous noise and described by the telegrapher's equation.…
We study how Cas9, a central component of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, searches for a target sequence on the DNA. We propose a model that includes as key ingredients 3D diffusion, 1D sliding along the DNA, and the effect of short binding…
Gene expression and regulation rely on an apparently finely tuned set of reactions between some proteins and DNA. Such DNA-binding proteins have to find specific sequences on very long DNA molecules and they mostly do so in absence of any…
It is widely recognized that the cleaving rate of a restriction enzyme on target DNA sequences is several orders of magnitude faster than the maximal one calculated from the diffusion--limited theory. It was therefore commonly assumed that…
We study a stochastic process where an active particle, modeled by a one-dimensional run-and-tumble particle, searches for a target with a finite absorption strength in thermal environments. Solving the Fokker-Planck equation for a uniform…
Genes are often regulated in living cells by proteins called transcription factors (TFs) that bind directly to short segments of DNA in close proximity to specific genes. These binding sites have a conserved nucleotide appearance, which is…
Upon contact with antigen presenting cells (APCs) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (T cells) establish a highly organized contact zone denoted as immunological synapse (IS). The formation of the IS implies relocation of the microtubule organizing…
It has long been asserted that proteins like transcription factors may locate their target in DNA sequences at rates that surpass by several orders of magnitude the three-dimensional diffusion limit thank to facilitated diffusion, that is…
In living cells, proteins combine 3D bulk diffusion and 1D sliding along the DNA to reach a target faster. This process is known as facilitated diffusion, and we investigate its dynamics in the physiologically relevant case of confined DNA.…
A crucial step in the regulation of gene expression is binding of transcription factor (TF) proteins to regulatory sites along the DNA. But transcription factors act at nanomolar concentrations, and noise due to random arrival of these…