title: How Xenopus laevis replicates DNA reliably even though its origins of replication are located and initiated stochastically.
abstract: DNA replication in Xenopus laevis is extremely reliable, failing to complete before cell division no more than once in 10 000 times; yet replication origin sites are located and initiated stochastically. Using a model based on 1D theories of nucleation and growth and using concepts from extreme-value statistics, we derive the distribution of replication times given a particular initiation function. We show that the experimentally observed initiation strategy for Xenopus laevis meets the reliability constraint and is close to the one that requires the fewest resources of a cell.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bechhoefer
authors.forename: Brandon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Marshall
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002453:Cell Cycle; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004261:DNA Replication; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D018741:Replication Origin; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D014982:Xenopus laevis / Q000235:genetics*