Non Equilibrium Transitions in a Polymer Replication Ensemble

TL;DR

This paper introduces a thermodynamically consistent model for polymer replication, revealing phase transitions between random and accurate copying populations driven by energy expenditure and sequence entropy.

Contribution

It establishes a universal phase diagram for copolymer copying accuracy and uncovers sharp non-equilibrium transitions in replication fidelity.

Findings

Identifies a minimum energy threshold for maintaining accurate copies.

Discovers sharp phase transitions between different copying regimes.

Provides a thermodynamic framework for understanding replication fidelity.

Abstract

The fuel-driven process of replication in living systems generates distributions of copied entities with varying degrees of copying accuracy. Here we introduce a thermodynamically consistent ensemble for investigating universal population features of replicating systems. In the context of copolymer copying, coarse-graining over molecular details, we establish a phase diagram of copying accuracy. We discover sharp non-equilibrium transitions between populations of random and accurate copies. Maintaining a population of accurate copies requires a minimum energy expenditure that depends on the configurational entropy of copolymer sequences.