Noise control and utility: from regulatory network to spatial patterning

Abstract

Stochasticity (or noise) at cellular and molecular levels has been observed extensively as a universal feature for living systems. However, how living systems deal with noise while performing desirable biological functions remains a major mystery. Regulatory network configurations, such as their topology and timescale, are shown to be critical in attenuating noise, and noise is also found to facilitate cell fate decision. Here we review major recent findings on noise attenuation through regulatory control, the benefit of noise via noise-induced cellular plasticity during developmental patterning, and summarize key principles underlying noise control.

References in corpus (4)

• Intrinsic noise profoundly alters the dynamics and steady state of morphogen-controlled bistable genetic switches
• Stochastic phenotype transition of a single cell in an intermediate region of gene-state switching
• The free energy cost of reducing noise while maintaining a high sensitivity
• Energy dissipation in an adaptive molecular circuit