Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of the RNA-RNA interaction underlying a genetic transposition program

Thermodynamic descriptions are powerful tools to formally study complex gene expression programs evolved in living cells on the basis of macromolecular interactions. While transcriptional regulations are often modeled in the equilibrium, other interactions that occur in the cell follow a more complex pattern. Here, we adopt a nonequilibrium thermodynamic scheme to explain the RNA-RNA interaction underlying IS10 transposition. We determine the energy landscape associated with such an interaction at the base-pair resolution, and we present an original scaling law for expression prediction that depends on different free energies characterizing that landscape. Then, we show that massive experimental data of the IS10 RNA-controlled expression are better explained by this thermodynamic description in nonequilibrium. Overall, these results contribute to better comprehend the kinetics of post-transcriptional regulations and, more broadly, the functional consequences of processes out of the equilibrium in biology.