title: Stochastic Predator-Prey Dynamics of Transposons in the Human Genome.
abstract: Transposable elements, or transposons, are DNA sequences that can jump from site to site in the genome during the life cycle of a cell, usually encoding the very enzymes which perform their excision. However, some transposons are parasitic, relying on the enzymes produced by the regular transposons. In this case, we show that a stochastic model, which takes into account the small copy numbers of the active transposons in a cell, predicts noise-induced predator-prey oscillations with a characteristic time scale that is much longer than the cell replication time, indicating that the state of the predator-prey oscillator is stored in the genome and transmitted to successive generations. Our work demonstrates the important role of the number fluctuations in the expression of mobile genetic elements, and shows explicitly how ecological concepts can be applied to the dynamics and fluctuations of living genomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, and Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Loomis Laboratory of Physics, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080, USA.|Institute for Universal Biology, and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Chi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, and Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Loomis Laboratory of Physics, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080, USA.|Institute for Universal Biology, and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Goldenfeld
mesh_terms: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D015870:Gene Expression; D016678:Genome; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements