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Related papers: Target search on a dynamic DNA molecule

200 papers

Motivated by recent single molecule studies of proteins sliding on a DNA molecule, we explore the targeting dynamics of N particles ("proteins") sliding diffusively along a line ("DNA") in search of their target site (specific target…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-11-11 Igor M. Sokolov , Ralf Metzler , Kiran Pant , Mark C. Williams

To ensure fast gene activation, Transcription Factors (TF) use a mechanism known as facilitated diffusion to find their DNA promoter site. Here we analyze such a process where a TF alternates between 3D and 1D diffusion. In the latter (TF…

Subcellular Processes · Quantitative Biology 2015-05-27 Juergen Reingruber , David Holcman

The CRISPR/Cas9 system acts as the prokaryotic immune system and has important applications in gene editing. The protein Cas9 is one of its crucial components. The role of Cas9 is to search for specific target sequences on the DNA and…

Subcellular Processes · Quantitative Biology 2021-11-30 Qiao Lu , Deepak Bhat , Darya Stepanenko , Simone Pigolotti

The mean time required by a transcription factor (TF) or an enzyme to find a target in the nucleus is of prime importance for the initialization of transcription, gene activation or the start of DNA repair. We obtain new estimates for the…

Biomolecules · Quantitative Biology 2007-12-21 G. Malherbe , D. Holcman

Despite significant progress in static protein structure collection and prediction, the dynamic behavior of proteins, one of their most vital characteristics, has been largely overlooked in prior research. This oversight can be attributed…

Biomolecules · Quantitative Biology 2024-09-19 Ce Liu , Jun Wang , Zhiqiang Cai , Yingxu Wang , Huizhen Kuang , Kaihui Cheng , Liwei Zhang , Qingkun Su , Yining Tang , Fenglei Cao , Limei Han , Siyu Zhu , Yuan Qi

Transcription factor (TF) molecules translocate by facilitated diffusion (a combination of 3D diffusion around and 1D random walk on the DNA). Despite the attention this mechanism received in the last 40 years, only a few studies…

Subcellular Processes · Quantitative Biology 2013-09-20 Nicolae Radu Zabet , Boris Adryan

Proteins need to selectively interact with specific targets among a multitude of similar molecules in the cell. But despite a firm physical understanding of binding interactions, we lack a general theory of how proteins evolve high…

Biomolecules · Quantitative Biology 2022-09-28 John M McBride , Jean-Pierre Eckmann , Tsvi Tlusty

Finding a target in a complex environment is a fundamental challenge in nature, from chemical reactions to sperm reaching an egg. An effective strategy to reduce the time needed to reach a target is to deploy many searchers, increasing the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-15 Elisabetta Ellettari , Giacomo Nasuti , Alberto Bassanoni , Alessandro Vezzani , Raffaella Burioni

Network science has become an essential interdisciplinary tool for understanding complex biological systems. However, because these systems undergo continuous, often stimulus-driven changes in both structure and function, traditional static…

Molecular Networks · Quantitative Biology 2025-05-19 Abir Khazaal , Fatemeh Vafaee

Molecular ecology uses molecular genetic data to answer traditional ecological questions in biogeography and biodiversity among others. Several ecological principles, such as the niche hypothesis and the competitive exclusions, are based on…

Despite the constant evolution of similarity searching research, it continues to face the same challenges stemming from the complexity of the data, such as the curse of dimensionality and computationally expensive distance functions.…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2022-10-06 Jaroslav Oľha , Terézia Slanináková , Martin Gendiar , Matej Antol , Vlastislav Dohnal

Under dilute in vitro conditions transcription factors rapidly locate their target sequence on DNA by using the facilitated diffusion mechanism. However, whether this strategy of alternating between three-dimensional bulk diffusion and…

Subcellular Processes · Quantitative Biology 2015-06-12 Max Bauer , Ralf Metzler

Unraveling the dynamical motions of biomolecules is essential for bridging their structure and function, yet it remains a major computational challenge. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation provides a detailed depiction of biomolecular…

Biomolecules · Quantitative Biology 2025-09-17 Allan dos Santos Costa , Manvitha Ponnapati , Dana Rubin , Tess Smidt , Joseph Jacobson

Recent experiments show that transcription factors (TFs) indeed use the facilitated diffusion mechanism to locate their target sequences on DNA in living bacteria cells: TFs alternate between sliding motion along DNA and relocation events…

Quantitative Methods · Quantitative Biology 2015-07-10 Maximilian Bauer , Emil S. Rasmussen , Michael A. Lomholt , Ralf Metzler

A genetic algorithm is suitable for exploring large search spaces as it finds an approximate solution. Because of this advantage, genetic algorithm is effective in exploring vast and unknown space such as molecular search space. Though the…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-24 Yurim Lee , Gydam Choi , Minsung Yoon , Cheongwon Kim

Protein motifs are conserved fragments occurred frequently in protein sequences. They have significant functions, such as active site of an enzyme. Search and clustering protein sequence motifs are computational intensive. Most existing…

Genomics · Quantitative Biology 2017-01-03 Haifeng Chen , Ting Chen

Protein structure prediction is pivotal for understanding the structure-function relationship of proteins, advancing biological research, and facilitating pharmaceutical development and experimental design. While deep learning methods and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-30 Kaihui Cheng , Ce Liu , Qingkun Su , Jun Wang , Liwei Zhang , Yining Tang , Yao Yao , Siyu Zhu , Yuan Qi

From a nanoscience perspective, cellular processes and their reduced in vitro imitations provide extraordinary examples for highly robust few or single molecule reaction pathways. A prime example are biochemical reactions involving DNA…

Biological Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Ralf Metzler , Tobias Ambjoernsson , Andreas Hanke , Yongli Zhang , Stephen Levene

Experiments indicate that unbinding rates of proteins from DNA can depend on the concentration of proteins in nearby solution. Here we present a theory of multi-step replacement of DNA-bound proteins by solution-phase proteins. For four…

Biomolecules · Quantitative Biology 2015-06-19 Simona Cocco , John F. Marko , Remi Monasson

Modeling of DNA-protein interactions is a complex process involving many important time and length scales. This can be facilitated through the use of coarse-grained models which reduce the number of degrees of freedom and allow efficient…