Thermodynamics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Thermodynamics, including details on enthalpy, entropy, energy transitions.

Reducing intrinsic biochemical noise in cells and its thermodynamic limit.

Qian H

Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. qian@amath.washington.edu

In living cells, the specificity of biomolecular recognition can be amplified and the noise from non-specific interactions can be reduced at the expense of cellular free energy. This is the seminal idea in the Hopfield-Ninio theory of kinetic proofreading: The specificity is increased via cyclic network kinetics without altering molecular structures and equilibrium affinites. We show a thermodynamic limit of the specificity amplification with a given amount of available free energy. For a normal cell under physiological condition with sustained phosphorylation potential, this gives a factor of 10(10) as the upper bound in specificity amplification. We also study an optimal kinetic network design that is capable of approaching the thermodynamic limit.

Published 5 September 2006 in J Mol Biol, 362(3): 387-92.
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