Simone Pigolotti
Departament de Fisica i Enginyeria Nuclear, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

Thermodynamics of biological copying

Biological systems are able to copy information at a finite temperature with outstanding fidelity. In biochemical reactions, discrimination of copies with respect to a template can either occur in the binding rates (forward discrimination) or in the unbinding rates (backward discrimination), or both. I will show how, in simple copying schemes, these two discrimination modes lead to opposite tradeoffs between error, dissipation and reaction velocity. I will also discuss examples of how different schemes can be combined in multi-step reactions, and compare the results with experimental studies of DNA duplication and protein synthesis.
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