Macromolecular Crowding Regulates the Gene Expression Profile by Limiting Diffusion.

ABSTRACT: We seek to elucidate the role of macromolecular crowding in transcription and translation. It is well known that stochasticity in gene expression can lead to differential gene expression and heterogeneity in a cell population. Recent experimental observations by Tan et al. have improved our understanding of the functional role of macromolecular crowding. It can be inferred from their observations that macromolecular crowding can lead to robustness in gene expression, resulting in a more homogeneous cell population. We introduce a spatial stochastic model to provide insight into this process. Our results show that macromolecular crowding reduces noise (as measured by the kurtosis of the mRNA distribution) in a cell population by limiting the diffusion of transcription factors (i.e. removing

SUBMITTER: Golkaram M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5125560 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature