Stochastic single-gene auto-regulation

Abstract

A detailed stochastic model of single-gene auto-regulation is established and its solutions are explored when mRNA dynamics is fast compared with protein dynamics and in the opposite regime. The model includes all the sources of randomness that are intrinsic to the auto-regulation process and it considers both transcriptional and post transcriptional regulation. The timescale separation allows the derivation of analytic expressions for the equilibrium distributions of protein and mRNA. These distributions are generally well described in the continuous approximation, which is used to discuss the qualitative features of the protein equilibrium distributions as a function of the biological parameters in the fast mRNA regime. The performance of the timescale approximation is assessed by comparison with simulations of the full stochastic system, and a good quantitative agreement is found for a wide range of parameter values. We show that either unimodal or bimodal equilibrium protein distributions can arise, and we discuss the auto-regulation mechanisms associated with bimodality.

15 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Analytical distributions for stochastic gene expression
• Spectral solutions to stochastic models of gene expression with bursts and regulation
• Gene circuit designs for noisy excitable dynamics
• Post-transcriptional regulation of noise in protein distributions during gene expression

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Stochastic modeling of auto-regulatory genetic feedback loops: a review and comparative study
• Dynamic behavior of stochastic gene expression models in the presence of bursting
• Transcriptional leakage versus noise: A simple mechanism of conversion between binary and graded response in autoregulated genes
• Time-dependent solutions for a stochastic model of gene expression with molecule production in the form of a compound Poisson process
• Influence of gene copy number on self-regulated gene expression
• Quantitative Analysis of a Transient Dynamics of a Gene Regulatory Network
• Stochastic oscillations induced by intrinsic fluctuations in a self-repressing gene: a deterministic approach