Biological
systems and soft materials:
Future
directions in statistical physics
A symposium on the interface of statistical
physics, biology, and chemistry
Department of Physics, Virginia Tech
March 6 and 7, 2004
Invited talk:
Leah B. Shaw
Departments of Chemical
Engineering and Physics,
A genome-wide statistical mechanics model for protein synthesis
with comparison to experimental data
In living cells,
DNA serves as the template from which mRNA is synthesized. mRNA is then
"read," or translated, by ribosomes to produce
proteins. Previous studies have shown a
nonlinear relationship between mRNA and protein levels, due to the complexity of
the translation process. We have
developed a model to help explain the quantitative relationship between mRNA
and protein levels for all genes in Escherichia coli. Each mRNA (with associated ribosomes) is modeled as a one-dimensional driven lattice gas. We use a statistical ensemble method in
fitting the model to experimental data.
Key parameters in the model include concentrations of ribosomes and other biomolecules. We find that the model can explain much of
the nonlinear relationship between mRNA and protein levels.