Stochastic effects in biomolecular systems have now been recognized as a major physiologically and evolutionarily important factor in the development and function of many living organisms. Nevertheless, they are often thought of as providing only moderate refinements to the behaviors otherwise predicted by the classical deterministic system description. In this work we show by using both analytical and numerical investigation that at least in one ubiquitous class of (bio)chemical-reaction mechanisms, enzymatic futile cycles, the external noise may induce a bistable oscillatory (dynamic switching) behavior that is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from what is predicted or possible deterministically. We further demonstrate that the noise required to produce these distinct properties can itself be caused by a set of auxiliary chemical reactions, making it feasible for biological systems of sufficient complexity to generate such behavior internally. This new stochastic dynamics then serves to confer additional functional modalities on the enzymatic futile cycle mechanism that include stochastic amplification and signaling, the characteristics of which could be controlled by both the type and parameters of the driving noise. Hence, such noise-induced phenomena may, among other roles, potentially offer a novel type of control mechanism in pathways that contain these cycles and the like units. In particular, observations of endogenous or externally driven noiseinduced dynamics in regulatory networks may thus provide additional insight into their topology, structure, and kinetics.network motif ͉ signal transduction ͉ chemical reaction ͉ synthetic biology ͉ systems biology

Replicative DNA polymerases present an intrinsic proofreading activity during which the DNA primer chain is transferred between the polymerization and exonuclease sites of the protein. The dynamics of this primer transfer reaction during active polymerization remain poorly understood. Here we describe a single-molecule mechanical method to investigate the conformational dynamics of the intramolecular DNA primer transfer during the processive replicative activity of the Phi 29 DNA polymerase and two of its mutants. We find that mechanical tension applied to a single polymerase-DNA complex promotes the intramolecular transfer of the primer in a similar way to the incorporation of a mismatched nucleotide. The primer transfer is achieved through two novel intermediates, one a tension-sensitive and functional polymerization conformation and a second non-active state that may work as a fidelity check point for the proofreading reaction.

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This paper is concerned with classes of models of stochastic reaction dynamics with time-scales separation.We demonstrate that the existence of the time-scale separation naturally leads to the application of the averaging principle and elimination of degrees of freedom via the renormalization of transition rates of slow reactions.The method suggested in this work is more general than other approaches presented previously: it is not limited to a particular type of stochastic processes and can be applied to different types of processes describing fast dynamics, and also provides crossover to the case when separation of time scales is not well pronounced. We derive a family of exact fluctuation-dissipation relations which establish the connection between effective rates and the statistics of the reaction events in fast reaction channels. An illustration of the technique is provided.Examples show that renormalized transition rates exhibit in general non-exponential relaxation behavior with a broad range of possible scenarios. 82.20.Uv