Effects of the DNA state fluctuation on single-cell dynamics of self-regulating gene.

A dynamical mean-field theory is developed to analyze stochastic single-cell dynamics of gene expression. By explicitly taking account of nonequilibrium and nonadiabatic features of the DNA state fluctuation, two-time correlation functions and response functions of single-cell dynamics are derived. The method is applied to a self-regulating gene to predict a rich variety of dynamical phenomena such as an anomalous increase of relaxation time and oscillatory decay of correlations. The effective "temperature" defined as the ratio of the correlation to the response in the protein number is small when the DNA state change is frequent, while it grows large when the DNA state change is infrequent, indicating the strong enhancement of noise in the latter case.