Independent control of mean and noise by convolution of gene expression distributions.

ABSTRACT: Gene expression noise can reduce cellular fitness or facilitate processes such as alternative metabolism, antibiotic resistance, and differentiation. Unfortunately, efforts to study the impacts of noise have been hampered by a scaling relationship between noise and expression level from individual promoters. Here, we use theory to demonstrate that mean and noise can be controlled independently by expressing two copies of a gene from separate inducible promoters in the same cell. We engineer low and high noise inducible promoters to validate this result in Escherichia coli, and develop a model that predicts the experimental distributions. Finally, we use our method to reveal that the response of a promoter to a repressor is less sensitive with higher repressor noise and explain this result

SUBMITTER: Gerhardt KP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8630168 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature