Isocost Lines Describe the Cellular Economy of Genetic Circuits.

ABSTRACT: Genetic circuits in living cells share transcriptional and translational resources that are available in limited amounts. This leads to unexpected couplings among seemingly unconnected modules, which result in poorly predictable circuit behavior. In this study, we determine these interdependencies between products of different genes by characterizing the economy of how transcriptional and translational resources are allocated to the production of proteins in genetic circuits. We discover that, when expressed from the same plasmid, the combinations of attainable protein concentrations are constrained by a linear relationship, which can be interpreted as an isocost line, a concept used in microeconomics. We created a library of circuits with two reporter genes, one constitutive and the other

SUBMITTER: Gyorgy A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4572570 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature