UNAM PI Asst. Prof. Aykut Erbaş and his co-authors, UNAM MSN PhD student Zafer Koşar and UNAM MSN master’s student A. Göktuĝ Attar, have published their research entitled “Unraveling the Protein-DNA Dissociation Kinetics in Bacterial Confinement” on the cover of the Biophysical Journal.
This study applies a molecular dynamic model and discusses which factors control the residence times of TFs on DNA. While DNAs encode life through genes, gene expression is primarily controlled at the transcription level by a set of proteins and transcription factors (TFs). The regulation mechanism of TFs depends on temporal DNA-TF interactions. Activatory or repressive TFs switch the gene between the “on” and “off” states after binding to specific sites in DNA. The lifetime of this transient interaction has a significant effect on transcription rates.
