Table 1.

Key constants for used for repair enzyme model Eqs. 1–6 and the conditions in Eqs. 7 and 8

Symbol	Definition	Typical value	Reference
D±	Diffusivity of adsorbed enzymes	5 × 106 bp2/s	(17)
υ	Electron velocity	1010 bp/s	(18)
f	Electron flip rate	109–1010 s−1	∗
m	Electron release rate	∼106 s−1	(19)
Ω	Bacterium volume	3.7 × 108nm3	(20)
L	Length of DNA	5 × 106 bp
kon	MutY2+ attachment rate	2000 s−1	(16)
koff	MutY2+ detachment rate	7 × 10−3 s−1	†
n0	Copy number of MutY in E. coli	20–30	(21,22)
r	Electron reflectivity of lesions	0–1	—
g0	Number of oxoGs on E. coli DNA	∼30	‡

^∗The mean free path of an electron is estimated to be λ ∼ 1–10 basepairs and the flip rate approximated as υ/λ.

^†Estimated using the time taken for the restriction endonuclease BsoBI to unbind from DNA (23), t_off = 150 s and taking k_off = 1/t_off. This value of t_off may not be an accurate value for the unbinding time for MutY.

^‡Assumes that ∼1 in 40,000 guanine bases are oxoGs (24) and the length of E. coli DNA is L = 5 × 10⁶ bp.