Related papers: Cross-talk and interference enhance information ca…
It often is emphasized that gene expression is noisy. A seemingly contradictory view is that control mechanisms have been optimized to squeeze as much information as possible out of a limited number of molecules. Here we revisit these…
Gene expression is controlled primarily by interactions between transcription factor proteins (TFs) and the regulatory DNA sequence, a process that can be captured well by thermodynamic models of regulation. These models, however, neglect…
A crucial step in the regulation of gene expression is binding of transcription factor (TF) proteins to regulatory sites along the DNA. But transcription factors act at nanomolar concentrations, and noise due to random arrival of these…
In the simplest view of transcriptional regulation, the expression of a gene is turned on or off by changes in the concentration of a transcription factor (TF). We use recent data on noise levels in gene expression to show that it should be…
Transcriptional regulatory network inference methods have been studied for years. Most of them relie on complex mathematical and algorithmic concepts, making them hard to adapt, re-implement or integrate with other methods. To address this…
The propagation of noise through parallel regulatory pathways is a characteristic feature of feed-forward loops in genetic networks. Although the contributions of the direct and indirect regulatory pathways of feed-forward loops to output…
Gene regulation relies on the specificity of transcription factor (TF) - DNA interactions. In equilibrium, limited specificity may lead to crosstalk: a regulatory state in which a gene is either incorrectly activated due to noncognate…
Changes in a cell's external or internal conditions are usually reflected in the concentrations of the relevant transcription factors. These proteins in turn modulate the expression levels of the genes under their control and sometimes need…
Regulation of gene expression is the consequence of interactions between the promoter of the gene and the transcription factors (TFs). In this paper, we explore the features of a genetic network where the TFs (activators and repressors)…
Cellular decision making is based on regulatory circuits that associate signal thresholds to specific physiological actions. This transmission of information is subjected to molecular noise what can decrease its fidelity. Here, we show…
We quantify the influence of the topology of a transcriptional regulatory network on its ability to process environmental signals. By posing the problem in terms of information theory, we may do this without specifying the function…
While coding regions in the genome have a direct interpretation in terms of protein products, significant fractions are non-coding and yet control essential biological functions. Unlike the genetic code, there is no "lookup table" that…
Living cells must control the reading out or "expression" of information encoded in their genomes, and this regulation often is mediated by transcription factors--proteins that bind to DNA and either enhance or repress the expression of…
Small, non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) play important roles as genetic regulators in prokaryotes. sRNAs act post-transcriptionally via complementary pairing with target mRNAs to regulate protein expression. We use a quantitative approach to compare…
Transcription factors (TFs) regulate gene expression through complex and co-operative mechanisms. While many TFs act together, the logic underlying TFs binding and their interactions is not fully understood yet. Most current approaches for…
In many organisms the expression levels of each gene are controlled by the activation levels of known "Transcription Factors" (TF). A problem of considerable interest is that of estimating the "Transcription Regulation Networks" (TRN)…
We consider a simplified model for gene regulation, where gene expression is regulated by transcription factors (TFs), which are single proteins or protein complexes. Proteins are in turn synthesised from expressed genes, creating a…
It is well-known that gene activation/deactivation dynamics may be a major source of randomness in genetic networks, also in the case of large concentrations of the transcription factors. In this work, we investigate the effect of realistic…
A prominent feature of gene transcription regulatory networks is the presence in large numbers of motifs, i.e, patterns of interconnection, in the networks. One such motif is the feed forward loop (FFL) consisting of three genes X, Y and Z.…
Homeostasis of protein concentrations in cells is crucial for their proper functioning, and this requires concentrations (at their steady-state levels) to be stable to fluctuations. Since gene expression is regulated by proteins such as…