Regulatory biology:

- Hernan Garcia and Rob Phillips, (2011), Quantitative dissection of the simple repression input-output function, PNAS, 108, 29, 12173-8.This paper demonstrates that thermodynamic models can make quantitative predictions about the level of gene expression as a a function of repressor copy number and operator strength.

- Lacromioara Bintu, etal., (2005), Transcriptional regulation by the numbers: models, Current Opinions in Genetics and Development, 15, 116-124. This paper outlines an approach to creating quantitative models of gene expression using thermodynamics of the binding of transcription factors and RNA polymerase to DNA.

- Lacramioara Bintu etal., (2005), Transcriptional regulation by the numbers: applications, Current Opinions in Genetics and Development, 15, 125-35. This paper outlines an approach of applying thermodynamic models to gene regulation.

- Ido Golding, (2005), Real-time kinetics of gene activity in individual bacteria, Cell, 123, 1025-036.This paper clearly demonstrates that the process by which mRNA is produced in the E.coli cell is stochastic in nature. A surprising observation is that the mRNA distribution is not Poisson, characterized by bursts in mRNA production. To this day the source of the stochasticity remains a mystery.

- Victor Sourjik and Howard C. Berg, (2002), Receptor sensitivity in bacterial chemotaxis, PNAS, 99, 123-127. and Victor Sourjik and Howard C. Berg, (2002), Binding of the Escherichia coli response regulator CheY to its target measured in vivo by fluorescence resonance energy transfer, PNAS, 99, 12669-12674. These two papers use the method of FRET to examine the relation between chemoattractant concentration and the chemical reactions within cells that control the frequency of tumbles.

- Juan Keymer etal.,(2006), Chemosensing in Escherichia coli: Two regimes of two-state receptors, PNAS, 103, 1786-1791. and Bernardo A. Mello and Yuhai Tu, (2005), An allosteric model for heterogeneous receptor complexes: Understanding bacterial chemotaxis responses to multiple stimuli, PNAS, 99, 12669-12674. Theory of chemotaxis: These two papers show how simple ideas from equilibrium statistical mechanics can be used to understand the chemotactic response of E. coli to different concentrations of chemoattractant.

The Physics of Genome Management:

- Roger Kornberg and Lubert Stryer, (1988), Statistical distibutions of nucleosome: nonrandom locations by a stochastic mechanism, Nucleic Acids Research, 16, 6677-6690.This paper shows how a simple model of excluded volume predicts how nucleosomes will be organized around promoters.

- Eran Segal etal., (2006), A genomic code for nucleosome positioning, Nature, 442, 772-778. This paper describe work aimed at determining genome wide nucleosome positioning preferences.

- Noam Kaplan etal., (2009), The DNA-encoded nucleosome organization of a euakryotic genome, Nature, 458, 362-366. This paper describe work aimed at determining genome wide nucleosome positioning preferences.

- Paul Wiggins etal., (2010), Strong intranucleoid interactions organize the E. coli chromosome into a nucleoid filament, PNAS, 107, 4991-5. This paper looks at the spatial organization of the genome in a cell.

- Douglas Smith etal., (2001), The bacteriophage phi29 portal motor can package DNA against a large interanl force, Nature, 413, 748-752. In this paper, optical tweezers are used to study the forces needed to package double-stranded DNA into a viral capsid.

- Alexander Tsankov etal., (2010), The role of nucleosome positioning in the evolution of gene regulation, PLoS Biology, 8, e1000414. This interesting paper examines the genome-wide nucleosome positions in 12 different yeast species. This data provides an excellent jumping off point for models of nucleosome positioning.

- K.J. Polach and J. Widom, (1995), Mechanism of protein access to specific DNA sequences in chromatin: A dynamic equilibrium model for gene regulation, JMB, 254, 130-149. This paper examines how different sites within nucleosomes grant access to DNA binding proteins and quantifies how this accessibility depends upon the depth of the sites of interest within the nucleosome.

Pattern formation in biology:

- Thomas Gregor, etal., (2005), Diffusion and scaling during early embryonic pattern formation, PNAS, 102, 18403-407.Quantitative analysis reveals that diffusion based mechanism cannot account for morphogen gradient scaling in early embryos across closely related fly species.

Evolution:

- Dobzhansky, (1973)"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". This classic article makes a compelling case for the primacy of evolution in the study of biology.