336,019 research outputs found
Predicting Transcription Factor Specificity with All-Atom Models
The binding of a transcription factor (TF) to a DNA operator site can
initiate or repress the expression of a gene. Computational prediction of sites
recognized by a TF has traditionally relied upon knowledge of several cognate
sites, rather than an ab initio approach. Here, we examine the possibility of
using structure-based energy calculations that require no knowledge of bound
sites but rather start with the structure of a protein-DNA complex. We study
the PurR E. coli TF, and explore to which extent atomistic models of
protein-DNA complexes can be used to distinguish between cognate and
non-cognate DNA sites. Particular emphasis is placed on systematic evaluation
of this approach by comparing its performance with bioinformatic methods, by
testing it against random decoys and sites of homologous TFs. We also examine a
set of experimental mutations in both DNA and the protein. Using our explicit
estimates of energy, we show that the specificity for PurR is dominated by
direct protein-DNA interactions, and weakly influenced by bending of DNA.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figure
Tight Bounds for Set Disjointness in the Message Passing Model
In a multiparty message-passing model of communication, there are
players. Each player has a private input, and they communicate by sending
messages to one another over private channels. While this model has been used
extensively in distributed computing and in multiparty computation, lower
bounds on communication complexity in this model and related models have been
somewhat scarce. In recent work \cite{phillips12,woodruff12,woodruff13}, strong
lower bounds of the form were obtained for several
functions in the message-passing model; however, a lower bound on the classical
Set Disjointness problem remained elusive.
In this paper, we prove tight lower bounds of the form
for the Set Disjointness problem in the message passing model. Our bounds are
obtained by developing information complexity tools in the message-passing
model, and then proving an information complexity lower bound for Set
Disjointness. As a corollary, we show a tight lower bound for the task
allocation problem \cite{DruckerKuhnOshman} via a reduction from Set
Disjointness
Continuous-Time Consensus under Non-Instantaneous Reciprocity
We consider continuous-time consensus systems whose interactions satisfy a
form or reciprocity that is not instantaneous, but happens over time. We show
that these systems have certain desirable properties: They always converge
independently of the specific interactions taking place and there exist simple
conditions on the interactions for two agents to converge to the same value.
This was until now only known for systems with instantaneous reciprocity. These
result are of particular relevance when analyzing systems where interactions
are a priori unknown, being for example endogenously determined or random. We
apply our results to an instance of such systems.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
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