title: A theoretical study on activation of transcription factor modulated by intracellular Ca2+ oscillations.
abstract: This work presents both deterministic and stochastic models of genetic expression modulated by intracellular calcium (Ca2+) oscillations, based on macroscopic differential equations and chemical Langevin equations, respectively. In deterministic case, the oscillations of intracellular Ca2+ decrease the effective Ca2+ threshold for the activation of transcriptional activator (TF-A). The average activation of TF-A increases with the increase of the average amplitude of intracellular Ca2+ oscillations, but decreases with the increase of the period of intracellular Ca2+ oscillations, which are qualitatively consistent with the experimental results on the gene expression in lymphocytes. In stochastic case, it is found that a large internal fluctuation of the biochemical reaction can enhance gene expression efficiency specifically at a low level of external stimulations or at a small rate of TF-A dimer phosphorylation activated by Ca2+, which reduces the threshold of the average intracellular Ca2+ concentration for gene expression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Jianghan University, Wuhan 430056, China.
authors.forename: Chun-lian
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Ya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jia
mesh_terms: D020013:Calcium Signaling / Q000502:physiology*; D002468:Cell Physiological Phenomena; D019281:Dimerization; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010766:Phosphorylation; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D014157:Transcription Factors