# name
Thermodynamic uncertainty relation in helicases: Experiments and simulations

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Treballs Finals de Grau de Física, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2021, Tutors: Maria Mañosas, Felix Ritort Farrán

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
Helicases are molecular motors that translocate on DNA in non-equilibrium conditions and use the energy from ATP hydrolysis to unwind DNA. Here we carry out magnetic tweezers experiments to study the unwinding and translocation activities of the gp41 replicative helicase in a DNA hairpin under the eﬀect of a mechanical force. We analyze the experimental results to compute the mean helicase rate and the diﬀusion coeﬃcient in diﬀerent experimental conditions (forces and ATP concentration). These quantities are related to the thermodynamic uncertainty factor Q [1], which can be used as a measure of the irreversibility of a given enzymatic process. We ﬁnd that the Q factor decreases with the applied force and has a non-monotonic behaviour with the ATP concentration. The results are compared with simulations of a simple model based on a biased random walk to describe the helicase motion on DNA

# metadata.dc.title[].value
Thermodynamic uncertainty relation in helicases: Experiments and simulations