Pulsatile inputs achieve tunable attenuation of gene expression variability and graded multi-gene regulation.

ABSTRACT: Many natural transcription factors are regulated in a pulsatile fashion, but it remains unknown whether synthetic gene expression systems can benefit from such dynamic regulation. Here we find, using a fast-acting, optogenetic transcription factor in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that dynamic pulsatile signals reduce cell-to-cell variability in gene expression. We then show that by encoding such signals into a single input, expression mean and variability can be independently tuned. Further, we construct a light-responsive promoter library and demonstrate how pulsatile signaling also enables graded multi-gene regulation at fixed expression ratios, despite differences in promoter dose-response characteristics. Pulsatile regulation can thus lead to beneficial functional behaviors in synthetic bi

SUBMITTER: Benzinger D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6117348 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature