A stochastic spectral analysis of transcriptional regulatory cascades.

ABSTRACT: The past decade has seen great advances in our understanding of the role of noise in gene regulation and the physical limits to signaling in biological networks. Here, we introduce the spectral method for computation of the joint probability distribution over all species in a biological network. The spectral method exploits the natural eigenfunctions of the master equation of birth-death processes to solve for the joint distribution of modules within the network, which then inform each other and facilitate calculation of the entire joint distribution. We illustrate the method on a ubiquitous case in nature: linear regulatory cascades. The efficiency of the method makes possible numerical optimization of the input and regulatory parameters, revealing design properties of, e.g., the most inf

SUBMITTER: Walczak AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2672483 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature