Error-speed correlations in biopolymer synthesis
arXiv:1905.12869 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.038101
Abstract
Synthesis of biopolymers such as DNA, RNA, and proteins are biophysical processes aided by enzymes. Performance of these enzymes is usually characterized in terms of their average error rate and speed. However, because of thermal fluctuations in these single-molecule processes, both error and speed are inherently stochastic quantities. In this paper, we study fluctuations of error and speed in biopolymer synthesis and show that they are in general correlated. This means that, under equal conditions, polymers that are synthesized faster due to a fluctuation tend to have either better or worse errors than the average. The error-correction mechanism implemented by the enzyme determines which of the two cases holds. For example, discrimination in the forward reaction rates tends to grant smaller errors to polymers with faster synthesis. The opposite occurs for discrimination in monomer rejection rates. Our results provide an experimentally feasible way to identify error-correction mechanisms by measuring the error-speed correlations.
PDF file consist of the main text (pages 1 to 5) and the supplementary material (pages 6 to 12). Overall, 7 figures split between main text and SI
References in corpus (8)
- The large deviation approach to statistical mechanics
- Fundamental Bounds on First Passage Time Fluctuations for Currents
- Kinetic vs. energetic discrimination in biological copying
- Thermodynamics of Error Correction
- Conservation Laws shape Dissipation
- Thermodynamics of accuracy in kinetic proofreading: Dissipation and efficiency trade-offs
- Kinetics and thermodynamics of first-order Markov chain copolymerization
- Protocols for copying and proofreading in template-assisted polymerization