Related papers: Template-directed biopolymerization: tape-copying …
Templated copying is the central operation by which biology produces complex molecules. Cells copy sequence information from DNA to RNA and on into proteins, which are the molecules responsible for the function and regulation of cellular…
Polymerization of RNA from a template DNA is carried out by a molecular machine called RNA polymerase (RNAP). It also uses the template as a track on which it moves as a motor utilizing chemical energy input. The time it spends at each…
Routinely navigating through an ever-changing and unsteady environment, and utilizing chemical energy, molecular motors transport the cell's crucial components, such as neurotransmitters and organelles. They generate force and pull cargo,…
Polymerases are protein enzymes that move along nucleic acid chains and catalyze template-based polymerization reactions during gene transcription and replication. The polymerases also substantially improve transcription or replication…
A fundamental design rule that nature has developed for biological machines is the intimate correlation between motion and function. One class of biological machines is molecular motors in living cells, which directly convert chemical…
Cell is the structural and functional unit of life. This Resource Letter serves as a guide to the literature on nano-machines which drive not only intracellular movements, but also motility of the cell. These machines are usually proteins…
RNA polymerase (RNAP) is a mobile molecular workshop that polymerizes a RNA molecule by adding monomeric subunits one by one, while moving step by step on the DNA template itself. Here we develop a theoretical model by incorporating the…
Molecular motors are macromolecular complexes which use some form of input energy to perform mechanical work. The filamentary tracks, on which these motors move, are made of either proteins (e.g., microtubules) or nucleic acids (DNA or…
Templated copolymerization, in which information stored in the sequence of a heteropolymer template is copied into another polymer product, is the mechanism behind all known methods of genetic information transfer. A key aspect of templated…
Tile displacement is a newly-recognized mechanism in DNA nanotechnology that exploits principles analogous to toehold-mediated strand displacement but within the context of self-assembled DNA origami tile arrays. Here, we formulate an…
Molecular-scale computation is crucial for smart materials and nanoscale devices, yet creating single-molecule systems capable of complex computations remains challenging. We present a theoretical framework for a single-molecule computer…
Transcription of the genetic message encoded chemically in the sequence of the DNA template is carried out by a molecular machine called RNA polymerase (RNAP). Backward or forward slippage of the nascent RNA with respect to the DNA template…
Polymer composites are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, owing to their emergent desirable mechanical properties not attainable in single-species systems. At the same time, polymer topology has been shown to play a key role in…
Nucleic acids and proteins are not only biologically important polymers: They have recently been recognized as novel functional materials surpassing in many aspects the conventional ones. Although Herculean efforts have been undertaken to…
{\it Transcription} is the process whereby RNA molecules are polymerized by molecular machines, called RNA polymerase (RNAP), using the corresponding DNA as the template. Recent {\it in-vivo} experiments with single cells have established…
RNA polymerase (RNAP) is molecular machine that polymerizes a RNA molecule, a linear heteropolymer, using a single stranded DNA (ssDNA) as the corresponding template; the sequence of monomers of the RNA is dictated by that of monomers on…
The transport of macromolecules, such as DNA, through the cytoskeleton is critical to wide-ranging cellular processes from cytoplasmic streaming to transcription. The rigidity and steric hindrances imparted by the network of filaments…
We discuss how information encoded in a template polymer can be stochastically copied into a copy polymer. We consider four different stochastic copy protocols of increasing complexity, inspired by building blocks of the mRNA translation…
Many cell functions are accomplished thanks to intracellular transport mechanisms of macromolecules along filaments. Molecular motors such as dynein or kinesin are proteins playing a primary role in these processes. The behavior of such…
The production of sequence-specific copolymers using copolymer templates is fundamental to the synthesis of complex biological molecules and is a promising framework for the synthesis of synthetic chemical complexes. Unlike the…