Influence of decoys on the noise and dynamics of gene expression

Anat Burger, Aleksandra M. Walczak, and Peter G. Wolynes
Phys. Rev. E 86, 041920 – Published 31 October 2012

Abstract

Many transcription factors bind to DNA with a remarkable lack of specificity, so that regulatory binding sites compete with an enormous number of nonregulatory “decoy” sites. For an autoregulated gene, we show decoy sites decrease noise in the number of unbound proteins to a Poisson limit that results from binding and unbinding. This noise buffering is optimized for a given protein concentration when decoys have a 1/2 probability of being occupied. Decoys linearly increase the time to approach steady state and exponentially increase the time to switch epigenetically between bistable states.

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  • Received 10 July 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.86.041920

©2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Anat Burger1,*, Aleksandra M. Walczak2, and Peter G. Wolynes3

  • 1Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California
  • 2Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
  • 3Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Rice University, Houston, Texas

  • *Present address: Department of Physics, FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Vol. 86, Iss. 4 — October 2012

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