DNA Rearrangements through Spatial Graphs

摘要

The paper is a short overview of a recent model of homologous DNA recombination events guided by RNA templates that have been observed in certain species of ciliates. This model uses spatial graphs to describe DNA rearrangements and show how gene recombination can be modeled as topological braiding of the DNA. We show that a graph structure, which we refer to as an assembly graph, containing only 1- and 4-valent rigid vertices can provide a physical representation of the DNA at the time of recombination. With this representation, 4-valent vertices correspond to the alignment of the recombination sites, and we model the actual recombination event as smoothing of these vertices.