English

The heterodimer auto-repression loop: a robust and flexible pulse-generating genetic module

Molecular Networks 2017-05-31 v1 Biological Physics Quantitative Methods

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of the heterodimer autorepression loop (HAL), a small genetic module in which a protein A acts as an auto-repressor and binds to a second protein B to form a AB dimer. For suitable values of the rate constants the HAL produces pulses of A alternating with pulses of B. By means of analytical and numerical calculations, we show that the duration of A-pulses is extremely robust against variation of the rate constants while the duration of the B-pulses can be flexibly adjusted. The HAL is thus a minimal genetic module generating robust pulses with tunable duration an interesting property for cellular signalling.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.10697,
  title  = {The heterodimer auto-repression loop: a robust and flexible pulse-generating genetic module},
  author = {B. Lannoo and E. Carlon and M. Lefranc},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.10697},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 5 figures and SI (6 pages)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:03:42.876Z