title: Kinetics and thermodynamics of living copolymerization processes.
abstract: Theoretical advances are reported on the kinetics and thermodynamics of free and template-directed living copolymerizations. Until recently, the kinetic theory of these processes had only been established in the fully irreversible regime, in which the attachment rates are only considered. However, the entropy production is infinite in this regime and the approach to thermodynamic equilibrium cannot be investigated. For this purpose, the detachment rates should also be included. Inspite of this complication, the kinetics can be exactly solved in the regimes of steady growth and depolymerization. In this way, analytical expressions are obtained for the mean growth velocity, the statistical properties of the copolymer sequences, as well as the thermodynamic entropy production. The results apply to DNA replication, transcription and translation, allowing us to understand important aspects of molecular evolution.This article is part of the themed issue 'Multiscale modelling at the physics-chemistry-biology interface'.
authors.affiliation: Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Code Postal 231, Campus Plaine, 1050 Brussels, Belgium gaspard@ulb.ac.be.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3804-2110
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gaspard
mesh_terms: D001665:Binding Sites; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D004261:DNA Replication; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase / Q000737:chemistry*; D007700:Kinetics; D046911:Macromolecular Substances / Q000737:chemistry*; D008956:Models, Chemical; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011485:Protein Binding; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D004247:DNA; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase
keywords: DNA replication; copolymers; kinetic theory of copolymerization; molecular evolution