Chargaff's second parity rule and the kinetics of DNA replication
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866917262351400960 |
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| author | Gaspard, Pierre |
| author_facet | Gaspard, Pierre |
| contents | This paper presents the study of a DNA replication model grounded in the biochemical kinetics of DNA polymerases, which copy each DNA strand into a complementary strand, except for rare point-like mutations caused by nucleotide substitution errors. Numerical simulations of many successive replications, starting from an arbitrary initial DNA sequence, show that the fractions of mono- and oligonucleotides converge toward compliance with Chargaff's second parity rule. The theoretical framework developed for this multireplication process demonstrates that the near-equalities of complementary nucleotide fractions arise from two key features: (1) the dominant role of base-pair complementarity in replication kinetics and (2) the low intrinsic error rate of DNA polymerases. Together, these two features yield a robust mechanistic basis for Chargaff's second parity rule. These considerations explain the existence of deviations with respect to the predictions of models assuming no-strand-bias conditions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_12101 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Chargaff's second parity rule and the kinetics of DNA replication Gaspard, Pierre Quantitative Methods This paper presents the study of a DNA replication model grounded in the biochemical kinetics of DNA polymerases, which copy each DNA strand into a complementary strand, except for rare point-like mutations caused by nucleotide substitution errors. Numerical simulations of many successive replications, starting from an arbitrary initial DNA sequence, show that the fractions of mono- and oligonucleotides converge toward compliance with Chargaff's second parity rule. The theoretical framework developed for this multireplication process demonstrates that the near-equalities of complementary nucleotide fractions arise from two key features: (1) the dominant role of base-pair complementarity in replication kinetics and (2) the low intrinsic error rate of DNA polymerases. Together, these two features yield a robust mechanistic basis for Chargaff's second parity rule. These considerations explain the existence of deviations with respect to the predictions of models assuming no-strand-bias conditions. |
| title | Chargaff's second parity rule and the kinetics of DNA replication |
| topic | Quantitative Methods |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12101 |