Becskei Attila, Kaufmann Benjamin B, van Oudenaarden Alexander
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
Nat Genet. 2005 Sep;37(9):937-44. doi: 10.1038/ng1616. Epub 2005 Aug 7.
The presence of low-copy-number regulators and switch-like signal propagation in regulatory networks are expected to increase noise in cellular processes. We developed a noise amplifier that detects fluctuations in the level of low-abundance mRNAs in yeast. The observed fluctuations are not due to the low number of molecules expressed from a gene per se but originate in the random, rare events of gene activation. The frequency of these events and the correlation between stochastic expressions of genes in a single cell depend on the positioning of the genes along the chromosomes. Transcriptional regulators produced by such random expression propagate noise to their target genes.
调控网络中低拷贝数调节因子的存在以及类似开关的信号传播预计会增加细胞过程中的噪声。我们开发了一种噪声放大器，可检测酵母中低丰度mRNA水平的波动。观察到的波动并非源于基因本身表达的分子数量少，而是源于基因激活的随机、罕见事件。这些事件的频率以及单个细胞中基因随机表达之间的相关性取决于基因在染色体上的定位。这种随机表达产生的转录调节因子会将噪声传播到其靶基因。
