Activation domains can decouple the mean and noise of gene expression.

ABSTRACT: Regulatory mechanisms set a gene's average level of expression, but a gene's expression constantly fluctuates around that average. These stochastic fluctuations, or expression noise, play a role in cell-fate transitions, bet hedging in microbes, and the development of chemotherapeutic resistance in cancer. An outstanding question is what regulatory mechanisms contribute to noise. Here, we demonstrate that, for a fixed mean level of expression, strong activation domains (ADs) at low abundance produce high expression noise, while weak ADs at high abundance generate lower expression noise. We conclude that differences in noise can be explained by the interplay between a TF's nuclear concentration and the strength of its AD's effect on mean expression, without invoking differences between clas

SUBMITTER: Loell K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9912357 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature