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Protein-DNA interactions are crucial for all biological processes. One of the most important fundamental aspects of these interactions is the process of protein searching and recognizing specific binding sites on DNA. A large number of…
Complex DNA topological structures, including polymer loops, are frequently observed in biological processes when protein molecules simultaneously bind to several distant sites on DNA. However, the molecular mechanisms of formation of these…
Protein-DNA interactions are critical for the successful functioning of all natural systems. The key role in these interactions is played by processes of protein search for specific sites on DNA. Although it has been studied for many years,…
The model of facilitated diffusion describes how DNA-binding proteins, such as transcription factors (TFs), find their chromosomal targets by combining 3D diffusion through the cytoplasm and 1D sliding along nonspecific DNA sequences. The…
Gene regulation is one of the most important fundamental biological processes in living cells. It involves multiple protein molecules that locate specific sites on DNA and assemble gene initiation or gene repression multi-molecular…
For most of the important processes in DNA metabolism, a protein has to reach a specific binding site on the DNA. The specific binding site may consist of just a few base pairs while the DNA is usually several millions of base pairs long.…
Some proteins can find their targets on DNA faster than by pure diffusion in the three-dimensional cytoplasm, through the process of facilitated diffusion: They can loosely bind to DNA and temporarily slide along it, thus being guided by…
The formation of DNA loops by proteins and protein complexes that bind at distal DNA sites plays a central role in many cellular processes, such as transcription, recombination, and replication. Here we review the basic thermodynamic…
We study a protein-DNA target search model with explicit DNA dynamics applicable to in vitro experiments. We show that the DNA dynamics plays a crucial role for the effectiveness of protein "jumps" between sites distant along the DNA…
Several processes in the cell, such as gene regulation, start when key proteins recognise and bind to short DNA sequences. However, as these sequences can be hundreds of million times shorter than the genome, they are hard to find by simple…
The structure of DNA Binding Proteins enables a strong interaction with their specific target site on DNA. However, recent single molecule experiment reported that proteins can diffuse on DNA. This suggests that the interactions between…
We present Brownian dynamics simulations of the facilitated diffusion of a protein, modelled as a sphere with a binding site on its surface, along DNA, modelled as a semi-flexible polymer. We consider both the effect of DNA organisation in…
Genomic expression depends critically both on the ability of regulatory proteins to locate specific target sites on a DNA within seconds and on the formation of long lived (many minutes) complexes between these proteins and the DNA.…
The process of protein search for specific binding sites on DNA is fundamentally important since it marks the beginning of all major biological processes. We present a theoretical investigation that probes the role of DNA sequence symmetry,…
Problems of search and recognition appear over different scales in biological systems. In this review we focus on the challenges posed by interactions between proteins, in particular transcription factors, and DNA and possible mechanisms…
Recognition and binding of specific sites on DNA by proteins is central for many cellular functions such as transcription, replication, and recombination. In the process of recognition, a protein rapidly searches for its specific site on a…
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…
All living systems can function only far away from equilibrium, and for this reason chemical kinetic methods are critically important for uncovering the mechanisms of biological processes. Here we present a new theoretical method of…
Living cells provide a fluctuating, out-of-equilibrium environment in which genes must coordinate cellular function. DNA looping, which is a common means of regulating transcription, is very much a stochastic process; the loops arise from…
The formation of DNA loops by proteins and protein complexes is ubiquitous to many fundamental cellular processes, including transcription, recombination, and replication. Here we review recent advances in understanding the properties of…