SULSA Student Jens Karschau publishes paper on 'Optimal Placement of Origins for DNA Replication'

Jens Karschau, a SULSA student at the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology at the University of Aberdeen, recently published in Physical Review Letters on the 'Optimal Placement of Origins for DNA Replication'.

The article appears in Volume 8, issue 5, and was co-authored with Professor Julian Blow (University of Dundee) and Dr Alessandro de Moura (University of Aberdeen).

The paper looks at the starting points for DNA replication, called origins, and how the placement of these starting points affects the length of time it takes for a cell to replicate its DNA during production of daughter cells. 

The authors used a mathematical model of the DNA replication process to determine the optimal origin location in a chromosome which led to the shortest average replication time.

Their models suggested that depending on how likely a replication point would successfully activate, and how long it would take to complete replication from the origin, the optimal placement of multiple origins was sometimes in a cluster in close proximity to each other, and sometimes much further apart in the genome.

This mathematical modelling of optimal origin placement corresponded with real life origin points in living organisms. The authors suggest that natural evolution has selected for optimal placement of origin locations to minimise replication time.

The paper can be read in Physical Review Letters, Volume 108, Issue 5, here.