Stochastic gene transcription with non-competitive transcription regulatory architecture

Abstract

The transcription factors, such as activators and repressors, can interact with the promoter of gene either in a competitive or non-competitive way. In this paper, we construct a stochastic model with non-competitive transcriptional regulatory architecture and develop an analytical theory that re-establishes the experimental results with an improved data fitting. The analytical expressions in the theory allow us to study the nature of the system corresponding to any of its parameters and hence, enable us to find out the factors that govern the regulation of gene expression for that architecture. We notice that, along with transcriptional reinitiation and repressors, there are other parameters that can control the noisiness of this network. We also observe that, the Fano factor (at mRNA level) varies from sub-Poissonian regime to super-Poissonian regime. In addition to the aforementioned properties, we observe some anomalous characteristics of the Fano factor (at mRNA level) and that of the variance of protein at lower activator concentrations in the presence of repressor molecules. This model is useful to understand the architecture of interactions which may buffer the stochasticity inherent to gene transcription.