Dynamics of gene expression under feedback

TL;DR

This paper investigates how feedback mechanisms influence gene expression dynamics, revealing complex behaviors and broad activity interval distributions, with applications to the lac system in E. coli.

Contribution

It introduces a model for gene expression with feedback, demonstrating nonlinear effects on transcriptional dynamics and applying it to experimental data.

Findings

Feedback induces nonlinear gene expression dynamics.

Gene activity intervals follow broad distributions.

Application to E. coli lac system confirms model relevance.

Abstract

Gene expression is a stochastic process governed by the presence of specific transcription factors. Here we study the dynamics of gene expression in the presence of feedback, where a gene regulates its own expression. The nonlinear coupling between input and output of gene expression can generate a dynamics different from simple scenarios such as the Poisson process. This is exemplified by our findings for the time intervals over which genes are transcriptionally active and inactive. We apply our results to the lac system in E. coli, where parametric inference on experimental data results in a broad distribution of gene activity intervals.