Nucleation and growth in one dimension. II. Application to DNA replication kinetics

Inspired by recent experiments on DNA replication, we apply a one-dimensional nucleation-and-growth model to DNA-replication kinetics, focusing on how to extract the time-dependent nucleation rate I(t) and growth speed v from data. We discuss generic experimental problems: namely, spatial inhomogeneity, measurement noise, and finite-size effects. After evaluating how each of these affects the measurements of I(t) and v, we give guidelines for the design of experiments. These ideas are then discussed in the context of the DNA-replication experiments.