Transient changes in intercellular protein variability identify sources of noise in gene expression.

ABSTRACT: Protein levels differ considerably between otherwise identical cells, and these differences significantly affect biological function and phenotype. Previous work implicated various noise mechanisms that drive variability in protein copy numbers across an isogenic cell population. For example, transcriptional bursting of mRNAs has been shown to be a major source of noise in the expression of many genes. Additional expression variability, referred to as extrinsic noise, arises from intercellular variations in mRNA transcription and protein translation rates attributed to cell-to-cell differences in cell size, abundance of ribosomes, etc. We propose a method to determine the magnitude of different noise sources in a given gene of interest. The method relies on blocking transcription and measu

SUBMITTER: Singh A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4223191 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature