Modeling the colloidal physics of translation elongation in E. coli

Abstract

An exciting frontier in the study of biological cells resides at the interface between biology and colloid physics: cellular processes that operate over colloidal length scales, where continuum fluid mechanics and Brownian motion underlie whole-cell scale behavior. It is at this scale that much of cell machinery operates and is where reconstitution and manipulation of cells is most challenging. This operational regime is centered between the two well-studied limits of structural and systems biology: the former focuses on atomistic-scale spatial resolution with little time evolution, and the latter on kinetic models that abstract space away.