The Rowland Institute at Harvard, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
Science. 2013 Dec 6;342(6163):1188-93. doi: 10.1126/science.1242975.
In individual cells, transcription is a random process obeying single-molecule kinetics. Often, it occurs in a bursty, intermittent manner. The frequency and size of these bursts affect the magnitude of temporal fluctuations in messenger RNA and protein content within a cell, creating variation or "noise" in gene expression. It is still unclear to what degree transcriptional kinetics are specific to each gene and determined by its promoter sequence. Alternative scenarios have been proposed, in which the kinetics of transcription are governed by cellular constraints and follow universal rules across the genome. Evidence from genome-wide noise studies and from systematic perturbations of promoter sequences suggest that both scenarios-namely gene-specific versus genome-wide regulation of transcription kinetics-may be present to different degrees in bacteria, yeast, and animal cells.
在单个细胞中，转录是一个随机的过程，遵循单分子动力学。通常，它以突发、间歇性的方式发生。这些爆发的频率和大小会影响细胞内信使 RNA 和蛋白质含量的时间波动幅度，从而在基因表达中产生变异或“噪声”。转录动力学在多大程度上是特定于每个基因的，并且由其启动子序列决定，这一点仍不清楚。已经提出了替代方案，即在转录动力学由细胞限制控制，并在整个基因组中遵循通用规则。来自全基因组噪声研究和启动子序列系统扰动的证据表明，在细菌、酵母和动物细胞中，转录动力学的基因特异性调节和全基因组调节这两种情况可能以不同的程度存在。
