Synergistic effect of auto-activation and small RNA regulation on gene expression

Li Ping Xiong, Yu Qiang Ma, Lei Han Tang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Auto-activation and small ribonucleic acid (RNA)-mediated regulation are two important mechanisms in controlling gene expression. We study the synergistic effect of these two regulations on gene expression. It is found that under this combinatorial regulation, gene expression exhibits bistable behaviors at the transition regime, while each of these two regulations, if working solely, only leads to monostability. Within the stochastic framework, the base pairing strength between sRNA and mRNA plays an important role in controlling the transition time between on and off states. The noise strength of protein number in the off state approaches 1 and is smaller than that in the on state. The noise strength also depends on which parameters, the feedback strength or the synthesis rate of small RNA, are tuned in switching the gene expression on and off. Our findings may provide a new insight into gene-regulation mechanism and can be applied in synthetic biology.

Original languageEnglish
Article number098701
JournalChinese Physics Letters
Volume27
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2010

Scopus Subject Areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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