dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaThe role of input noise in transcriptional regulation
| Authors | Gasper Tkacik, Thomas Gregor, William Bialek |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | q-bio/0701002 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0701002 |
| DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0002774 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE 3: e2774 (2008) |
Abstract
Even under constant external conditions, the expression levels of genes fluctuate. Much emphasis has been placed on the components of this noise that are due to randomness in transcription and translation; here we analyze the role of noise associated with the inputs to transcriptional regulation, the random arrival and binding of transcription factors to their target sites along the genome. This noise sets a fundamental physical limit to the reliability of genetic control, and has clear signatures, but we show that these are easily obscured by experimental limitations and even by conventional methods for plotting the variance vs. mean expression level. We argue that simple, global models of noise dominated by transcription and translation are inconsistent with the embedding of gene expression in a network of regulatory interactions. Analysis of recent experiments on transcriptional control in the early Drosophila embryo shows that these results are quantitatively consistent with the predicted signatures of input noise, and we discuss the experiments needed to test the importance of input noise more generally.
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"abstract": "Even under constant external conditions, the expression levels of genes\nfluctuate. Much emphasis has been placed on the components of this noise that\nare due to randomness in transcription and translation; here we analyze the\nrole of noise associated with the inputs to transcriptional regulation, the\nrandom arrival and binding of transcription factors to their target sites along\nthe genome. This noise sets a fundamental physical limit to the reliability of\ngenetic control, and has clear signatures, but we show that these are easily\nobscured by experimental limitations and even by conventional methods for\nplotting the variance vs. mean expression level. We argue that simple, global\nmodels of noise dominated by transcription and translation are inconsistent\nwith the embedding of gene expression in a network of regulatory interactions.\nAnalysis of recent experiments on transcriptional control in the early\nDrosophila embryo shows that these results are quantitatively consistent with\nthe predicted signatures of input noise, and we discuss the experiments needed\nto test the importance of input noise more generally.",
"arxiv_id": "q-bio/0701002",
"authors": [
"Gasper Tkacik",
"Thomas Gregor",
"William Bialek"
],
"categories": [
"q-bio.MN",
"q-bio.CB"
],
"doi": "10.1371/journal.pone.0002774",
"journal_ref": "PLoS ONE 3: e2774 (2008)",
"title": "The role of input noise in transcriptional regulation",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0701002"
},
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