Related papers: Absolute Rate Theories of Epigenetic Stability
Stochastic dynamics of chemical reactions in a mutually repressing two-gene circuit is numerically simulated. The circuit has a rich variety of different states when the kinetic change of DNA status is slow. The stochastic switching…
Stochastic reaction networks are mathematical models frequently used in, but not limited to, biochemistry. These models are continuous-time Markov chains whose transition rates depend on certain parameters called rate constants, which…
How much information does a cell inherit from its ancestors beyond its genetic sequence? What are the epigenetic mechanisms that allow this? Despite the rise in available epigenetic data, how such information is inherited through the cell…
The nonequilibrium stationary state of an exclusive genetic switch is considered. The model comprises two competing species and a single binding site which, when bound to by a protein of one species, causes the other species to be…
Adaptation mechanism of cells on the basis of stochastic gene expression and epigenetic modification is proposed. From marginally stable states generated by epigenetic modification, a gene expression pattern that achieves greater cell…
Bistable biochemical switches are ubiquitous in gene regulatory networks and signal transduction pathways. Their switching dynamics, however, are difficult to study directly in experiments or conventional computer simulations, because…
Cells can often choose among several stably heritable phenotypes. Examples are the expression of genes in eukaryotic cells where long chromosomal regions can adopt persistent and heritable silenced or active states, that may be associated…
Cells use genetic switches to shift between alternate gene expression states, e.g., to adapt to new environments or to follow a developmental pathway. Here, we study the dynamics of switching in a generic-feedback on/off switch. Unlike…
In higher organisms, all cells share the same genome, but every cell expresses only a limited and specific set of genes that defines the cell type. During cell division, not only the genome, but also the cell type is inherited by the…
We present a real-time path integral theory for the rate of electron transfer reactions. Using graph theoretic techniques, the dynamics is expressed in a formally exact way as a set of integral equations. With a simple approximation for the…
This paper focuses on the maximum speed at which biological evolution can occur. I derive inequalities that limit the rate of evolutionary processes driven by natural selection, mutations, or genetic drift. These \emph{rate limits} link the…
Equilibrium rate theories play a crucial role in understanding rare, reactive events. However, they are inapplicable to a range of irreversible processes in systems driven far from thermodynamic equilibrium like active and biological…
When mutation rates are low, natural selection remains effective, and increasing the mutation rate can give rise to an increase in adaptation rate. When mutation rates are high to begin with, however, increasing the mutation rate may have a…
Genetic switch systems with mutual repression of two transcription factors are studied using deterministic methods (rate equations) and stochastic methods (the master equation and Monte Carlo simulations). These systems exhibit bistability,…
We link two phenomena concerning the asymptotical behavior of stochastic processes: (i) abrupt convergence or cut-off phenomenon, and (ii) the escape behavior usually associated to exit from metastability. The former is characterized by…
We consider the stochastic gene expression process with inter-state flip-flops. An exact steady-state solution to the master equation is calculated. One of the main goals in this paper is to investigate whether the probability distribution…
We present a common framework to study decay and exchanges rates in a wide class of dynamical systems. Several applications, ranging form the metric theory of continuons fractions and the Shannon capacity of contrained systems to the decay…
When modelling driven steady states of matter, it is common practice either to choose transition rates arbitrarily, or to assume that the principle of detailed balance remains valid away from equilibrium. Neither of those practices is…
Cells are known to utilize biochemical noise to probabilistically switch between distinct gene expression states. We demonstrate that such noise-driven switching is dominated by tails of probability distributions and is therefore…
Under constant selection, each trait has a fixed fitness, and small mutation rates allow populations to efficiently exploit the optimal trait. Therefore it is reasonable to expect mutation rates will evolve downwards. However, we find this…