dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaAn Exact Model of Fluctuations in Gene Expression
| Authors | William W. Chen, Jeremy L. England, Eugene I. Shakhnovich |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | q-bio/0402021 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0402021 |
Abstract
Fluctuations in the measured mRNA levels of unperturbed cells under fixed conditions have often been viewed as an impediment to the extraction of information from expression profiles. Here, we argue that such expression fluctuations should themselves be studied as a source of valuable information about the underlying dynamics of genetic networks. By analyzing microarray data taken from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we demonstrate that correlations in expression fluctuations have a highly statistically significant dependence on gene function, and furthermore exhibit a remarkable scale-free network structure. We therefore present what we view to be the simplest phenomenological model of a genetic network which can account for the presence of biological information in transcript level fluctuations. We proceed to exactly solve this model using a path integral technique and derive several quantitative predictions. Finally, we propose several experiments by which these predictions might be rigorously tested.
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"abstract": "Fluctuations in the measured mRNA levels of unperturbed cells under fixed\nconditions have often been viewed as an impediment to the extraction of\ninformation from expression profiles. Here, we argue that such expression\nfluctuations should themselves be studied as a source of valuable information\nabout the underlying dynamics of genetic networks. By analyzing microarray data\ntaken from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we demonstrate that correlations in\nexpression fluctuations have a highly statistically significant dependence on\ngene function, and furthermore exhibit a remarkable scale-free network\nstructure. We therefore present what we view to be the simplest\nphenomenological model of a genetic network which can account for the presence\nof biological information in transcript level fluctuations. We proceed to\nexactly solve this model using a path integral technique and derive several\nquantitative predictions. Finally, we propose several experiments by which\nthese predictions might be rigorously tested.",
"arxiv_id": "q-bio/0402021",
"authors": [
"William W. Chen",
"Jeremy L. England",
"Eugene I. Shakhnovich"
],
"categories": [
"q-bio.MN",
"cond-mat.soft"
],
"title": "An Exact Model of Fluctuations in Gene Expression",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0402021"
},
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