Translation of messenger RNA (mRNA) leads to the production of proteins and is the last step of gene expression in cells. The dysregulation of translation can lead to all illnesses linked to the dysregulation of protein production, like cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.About ten years ago, a ribosomal density mapping strategy (Ribo-seq) was developed. The time is therefore ripe to apply theoretical physicsmethods to study translation. We model the movement of ribosomes on mRNA using the Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (TASEP) which is an out of equilibrium one dimensional directed transport model. With Monte Carlo simulations and a mean field approach, we propose a way to calculate the speed of ribosomes from experimental data. Moreover, we provide preliminary results concerning the correlation between the speed of ribosomes and the occurrence rate of codons (RSCU).

The DNA shows a high degree of spatial and dynamical organization over a broad range of length scales. It interacts with different populations of proteins and can form protein-DNA complexes that underlie various biological processes, including chromosome segregation. A prominent example is the large ParB-DNA complex, an essential component of a widely spread mechanism for DNA segregation in bacteria. Recent studies suggest that DNA-bound ParB proteins interact with each other and condense into large clusters with multiple extruding DNA-loops.In my talk, I present the Looping and Clustering model [1], a simple statistical physics approach to describe how proteins assemble into a protein-DNA cluster with multiple loops. Our analytic model predicts binding profiles of ParB proteins in good agreement with data from high precision ChIP-sequencing – a biochemical technique to analyze the interaction between DNA and proteins at the level of the genome. The Looping and Clustering framework provides a quantitative tool that could be exploited to interpret further experimental results of ParB-like protein complexes and gain some new insights into the organization of DNA.

Efficient bacterial chromosome segregation typically requires the coordinated action of a three-component, fueled by adenosine triphosphate machinery called the partition complex. We present a phenomenological model accounting for the dynamic activity of this system that is also relevant for the physics of catalytic particles in active environments. The model is obtained by coupling simple linear reaction-diffusion equations with a proteophoresis, or “volumetric” chemophoresis, force field that arises from protein-protein interactions and provides a physically viable mechanism for complex translocation. This minimal description captures most known experimental observations: dynamic oscillations of complex components, complex separation and subsequent symmetrical positioning. The predictions of our model are in phenomenological agreement with and provide substantial insight into recent experiments. From a non-linear physics view point, this system explores the active separation of matter at micrometric scales with a dynamical instability between static positioning and travelling wave regimes triggered by the dynamical spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry.

Efficient bacterial chromosome segregation typically requires the coordinated action of a three-component, fueled by adenosine triphosphate machinery called the partition complex. We present a phenomenological model accounting for the dynamic activity of this system that is also relevant for the physics of catalytic particles in active environments. The model is obtained by coupling simple linear reaction-diffusion equations with a proteophoresis, or “volumetric” chemophoresis, force field that arises from protein-protein interactions and provides a physically viable mechanism for complex translocation. This minimal description captures most known experimental observations: dynamic oscillations of complex components, complex separation and subsequent symmetrical positioning. The predictions of our model are in phenomenological agreement with and provide substantial insight into recent experiments. From a non-linear physics view point, this system explores the active separation of matter at micrometric scales with a dynamical instability between static positioning and travelling wave regimes triggered by the dynamical spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry.

Chromosome and plasmid segregation in bacteria are mostly driven by ParABS systems. These DNA partitioning machineries rely on large nucleoprotein complexes assembled on centromere sites (parS). However, the mechanism of how a few parS-bound ParB proteins nucleate the formation of highly concentrated ParB clusters remains unclear despite several proposed physico-mathematical models. We discriminated between these different models by varying some key parameters in vivo using the plasmid F partition system. We found that ‘Nucleation & caging’ is the only coherent model recapitulating in vivo data. We also showed that the stochastic self-assembly of partition complexes (i) does not directly involve ParA, (ii) results in a dynamic structure of discrete size independent of ParB concentration, and (iii) is not perturbed by active transcription but is by protein complexes. We refined the ‘Nucleation & Caging’ model and successfully applied it to the chromosomally-encoded Par system of Vibrio cholerae, indicating that this stochastic self-assembly mechanism is widely conserved from plasmids to chromosomes.

We model the ParABS system, which is a bacterial DNA Segregation Apparatus.