Journal: The Journal of Chemical Physics
Author: Jingyu Kang1,2, Sanggeun Song3,4, Ji-Hyun Kim1,2*, and Jaeyoung Sung1,2*
1 Global Science Research Center for Systems Chemistry, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea.
2 Creative Research Initiative Center for Chemical Dynamics in Living Cells, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea
3 Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, U.S.A.
4 Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, U.S.A.
*To whom correspondences should be addressed.
Email: jaeyoung@cau.ac.kr; jihyunkim@cau.ac.kr
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0331567
Biomolecules suffering birth and death in living cells often exhibit non-exponential lifetime distributions. However, the chemical dynamics of these biomolecules cannot be described by conventional chemical kinetics or chemical master equations. Here, we present exact results for the mean, time correlation function, and power spectrum of the copy number of biomolecules in living cells, establishing their relationship to product creation dynamics and lifetime distributions. The correctness of these results is confirmed against accurate stochastic simulations. This work establishes the power spectrum of the copy number of biomolecules as a quantitative probe of their intracellular reaction dynamics.