The heterodimer auto-repression loop: a robust and flexible pulse-generating genetic module

TL;DR

The paper analyzes the heterodimer auto-repression loop (HAL), demonstrating it as a minimal, robust, and tunable genetic module capable of generating alternating protein pulses, useful for cellular signaling.

Contribution

It provides analytical and numerical evidence that HAL produces robust A-pulses and flexible B-pulses, highlighting its potential as a versatile genetic pulse generator.

Findings

A-pulse duration is highly robust to parameter changes.

B-pulse duration can be tuned flexibly.

HAL functions as a minimal pulse-generating genetic module.

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of the heterodimer autorepression loop (HAL), a small genetic module in which a protein A acts as an auto-repressor and binds to a second protein B to form a AB dimer. For suitable values of the rate constants the HAL produces pulses of A alternating with pulses of B. By means of analytical and numerical calculations, we show that the duration of A-pulses is extremely robust against variation of the rate constants while the duration of the B-pulses can be flexibly adjusted. The HAL is thus a minimal genetic module generating robust pulses with tunable duration an interesting property for cellular signalling.