title: Contributions of low molecule number and chromosomal positioning to stochastic gene expression.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Attila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Becskei
authors.forename: Benjamin B
authors.initials: BB
authors.lastname: Kaufmann
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: van Oudenaarden
mesh_terms: D015825:Chromosomes, Fungal; D004261:DNA Replication; D018628:Gene Dosage; D015966:Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal; D007700:Kinetics; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010957:Plasmids / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics*; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D016008:Statistical Distributions; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D014158:Transcription, Genetic; D015533:Transcriptional Activation
chemical_list: D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins