Facilitated diffusion buffers noise in gene expression

TL;DR

Facilitated diffusion, involving 3D and 1D diffusion, reduces gene expression noise by accelerating target binding, as shown through a two-state Markov model analysis.

Contribution

This study demonstrates how facilitated diffusion buffers gene expression noise by modeling the binding process as a two-state Markov system.

Findings

Facilitated diffusion accelerates target site finding.

Reduced noise in mRNA and protein levels.

Two-state Markov model effectively describes the process.

Abstract

Transcription factors perform facilitated diffusion (3D diffusion in the cytosol and 1D diffusion on the DNA) when binding to their target sites to regulate gene expression. Here, we investigated the influence of this binding mechanism on the noise in gene expression. Our results showed that, for biologically relevant parameters, the binding process can be represented by a two-state Markov model and that the accelerated target finding due to facilitated diffusion leads to a reduction in both the mRNA and the protein noise.