Amplification of kinetic oscillations in gene expression

Journal article, 2008

Because of the feedbacks between the DNA transcription and mRNA translation, the gene expression in cells may exhibit bistability and oscillations. The deterministic and stochastic calculations presented illustrate how the bistable kinetics of expression of one gene in a cell can be influenced by the kinetic oscillations in the expression of another gene. Due to stability of the states of the bistable kinetics of gene 1 and the relatively small difference between the maximum and minimum protein amounts during the oscillations of gene 2, the induced oscillations of gene 1 are found to typically be related either to the low-or high-reactive state of this gene. The quality of the induced oscillations may be appreciably better than that of the inducing oscillations. This means that gene 1 can serve as an amplifier of the kinetic oscillations of gene 2. © 2008 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.