title: Cooperativity of Negative Autoregulation Confers Increased Mutational Robustness.
abstract: Negative autoregulation is universally found across organisms. In the bacterium Escherichia coli, transcription factors often repress their own expression to form a negative feedback network motif that enables robustness to changes in biochemical parameters. Here we present a simple phenomenological model of a negative feedback transcription factor repressing both itself and another target gene. The strength of the negative feedback is characterized by three parameters: the cooperativity in self-repression, the maximal expression rate of the transcription factor, and the apparent dissociation constant of the transcription factor binding to its own promoter. Analysis of the model shows that the target gene levels are robust to mutations in the transcription factor, and that the robustness improves as the degree of cooperativity in self-repression increases. The prediction is tested in the LexA transcriptional network of E. coli by altering cooperativity in self-repression and promoter strength. Indeed, we find robustness is correlated with the former. Considering the proposed importance of gene regulation in speciation, parameters governing a transcription factor's robustness to mutation may have significant influence on a cell or organism's capacity to evolve.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Marciano
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Rhonald C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Lua
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Herman
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.|Verna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.|Computational and Integrative Biomedical Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Lichtarge
mesh_terms: D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D006706:Homeostasis; D009154:Mutation; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D014157:Transcription Factors; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D014157:Transcription Factors