Computational methods to study kinetics of DNA replication

Methods Mol Biol. 2009:521:555-73. doi: 10.1007/978-1-60327-815-7_32.

Abstract

New technologies such as DNA combing have led to the availability of large quantities of data that describe the state of DNA while undergoing replication in S phase. In this chapter, we describe methods used to extract various parameters of replication--fork velocity, origin initiation rate, fork density, numbers of potential and utilized origins--from such data. We first present a version of the technique that applies to "ideal" data. We then show how to deal with, a number of real-world complications, such as the asynchrony of starting times of a population of cells, the finite length of fragments used in the analysis, and the finite amount of DNA in a chromosome.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • DNA Replication*
  • Humans
  • Kinetics
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence
  • Models, Biological*
  • S Phase