A matter of time: Using dynamics and theory to uncover mechanisms of transcriptional bursting

Abstract

Eukaryotic transcription generally occurs in bursts of activity lasting minutes to hours; however, state-of-the-art measurements have revealed that many of the molecular processes that underlie bursting, such as transcription factor binding to DNA, unfold on timescales of seconds. This temporal disconnect lies at the heart of a broader challenge in physical biology of predicting transcriptional outcomes and cellular decision-making from the dynamics of underlying molecular processes. Here, we review how new dynamical information about the processes underlying transcriptional control can be combined with theoretical models that predict not only averaged transcriptional dynamics, but also their variability, to formulate testable hypotheses about the molecular mechanisms underlying transcriptional bursting and control.

arXiv comment41 pages, 4 figures, review article

References in corpus (7)

• Quantum majorization and a complete set of entropic conditions for quantum thermodynamics
• Effect of promoter architecture on the cell-to-cell variability in gene expression
• A matter of time: Using dynamics and theory to uncover mechanisms of transcriptional bursting
• Simplicity of Completion Time Distributions for Common Complex Biochemical Processes
• Precision of readout at the hunchback gene: analyzing short transcription time traces in living fly embryos
• Reconciling Kinetic and Equilibrium Models of Bacterial Transcription
• Abortive Initiation as a Bottleneck for Transcription in the Early Drosophila Embryo

Cited by in corpus (2)

• A matter of time: Using dynamics and theory to uncover mechanisms of transcriptional bursting
• Inferring stochastic rates from heterogeneous snapshots of particle positions