Hysteresis in DNA compaction by Dps is described by an Ising model
Abstract
Cooperativity has been a fundamental concept in our understanding of biological systems for over a century. Here, we describe the observation of cooperative binding that exhibits long-lived hysteresis and cannot be described by a standard Hill model. Inspired by the Ising model of ferromagnetism, we describe this hysteresis as a consequence of cooperative binding in the limit of large complexes. We provide a method to relate the amount of hysteresis to the strength of the neighboring interactions between bound proteins and DNA. This novel kinetic feature of macromolecular complexes allows cells to create a binary response to small changes in external conditions and causes complexes to retain a memory of past conditions over long timescales.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- May 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1521241113
- Bibcode:
- 2016PNAS..113.4982V