Understanding the role of thermal fluctuations in biological copying mechanisms

In the process of transcription, translation, or self-replication of DNA or RNA, information is transmitted to the incipient species from its predecessor. These processes can be considered as (generalized) biological copying mechanisms as the newly formed biological bodies like DNA, RNA, or proteins represent the information of their parent entities uniquely. The correctness of these copying mechanisms is essential, since errors in the copied code can affect the functionality of the next generation. Such errors might appear from perturbations on these processes. Most crucial in this context is the temperature of the medium, i.e., thermal noise. Although a considerable amount of experimental studies have been done on this important issue, theoretical understanding is almost missing. In the current work, we describe a model study which can focus on the effect of the temperature on the process of biological copying mechanisms, as well as on mutation. We show that for our paradigmatic models, in a quite general scenario, the copying processes are most efficient at an intermediate temperature range; i.e., there occurs an optimum temperature where mutation is most unlikely. This allows us to explain the observations for some biological species with the help of our model study.