Dissipation-error tradeoff in proofreading

Chemical proofreading systems, of the kind believed responsible for the extremely high fidelity of DNA replication, achieve minimum error probability (equal to the product of the error probabilities of the writing and proofreading stages) only in the limit of infinite energy dissipation. However, a considerable degree of proof-reading can be obtained in less strongly driven systems, dissipation only 0.1-1 kT/step. © 1979.