Related papers: The long and short of templated copying
Living systems produce copies of information-carrying molecules such as DNA by assembling monomer units into finite-length oligomer (short polymer) copies. We explore the role of initiation and termination of the copy process in the…
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…
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…
Living systems produce "persistent" copies of information-carrying polymers, in which template and copy sequences remain correlated after physically decoupling. We identify a general measure of the thermodynamic efficiency with which these…
Information processing at the molecular scale is limited by thermal fluctuations. This can cause undesired consequences in copying information since thermal noise can lead to errors that can compromise the functionality of the copy. For…
Living cells use readout molecules to record the state of receptor proteins, similar to measurements or copies in typical computational devices. But is this analogy rigorous? Can cells be optimally efficient, and if not, why? We show that,…
DNA, RNA and proteins are among the most important macromolecules in a living cell. These molecules are polymerized by molecular machines. These natural nano-machines polymerize such macromolecules, adding one monomer at a time, using…
Living cells use readout molecules to record the state of receptor proteins, similar to measurements or copies in typical computational devices. But is this analogy rigorous? Can cells be optimally efficient, and if not, why? We show that,…
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…
Due to large fluctuations in cellular environments, transfer of information in biological processes without regulation is inherently error-prone. The mechanistic details of error-reducing mechanisms in biological copying processes have been…
The fuel-driven process of replication in living systems generates distributions of copied entities with varying degrees of copying accuracy. Here we introduce a thermodynamically consistent ensemble for investigating universal population…
Cellular functions are established through biological evolution, but are constrained by the laws of physics. For instance, the physics of protein folding limits the lengths of cellular polypeptide chains. Consequently, many cellular…
Self-replicating systems based on information-coding polymers are of crucial importance in biology. They also recently emerged as a paradigm in material design on nano- and micro-scales. We present a general theoretical and numerical…
We experimentally demonstrate that information replication by templated ligation of DNA strands inherits a kinetic proofreading mechanism and achieves significant error suppression through cascade replication. A simple simulation model…
Cells produce RNA and proteins via molecular templating networks. We show that information transmission in such networks is bounded by functions of a simple thermodynamic property of the network, regardless of complexity. Surprisingly,…
Each living species carries a complex DNA sequence that determines their unique features and functionalities. It is generally assumed that life started from a random pool of oligonucleotides sequences, generated by a prebiotic…
An important issue for the origins of life is ensuring the accurate maintenance of information in replicating polymers in the face of inevitable errors. Here, we investigated how this maintenance depends on reaction kinetics by…
Cell polarization underlies many cellular processes, such as differentiation, migration, and budding. Many living cells, such as budding yeast and fission yeast, use cytoskeletal structures to actively transport proteins to one location on…
Folding and aggregation of proteins, the interaction between proteins and membranes, as well as the adsorption of organic soft matter to inorganic solid substrates belong to the most interesting challenges in understanding structure and…
Understanding the thermodynamics of the duplication process is a fundamental step towards a comprehensive physical theory of biological systems. However, the immense complexity of real cells obscures the fundamental tensions between energy…