Accurate analytic solution of chemical master equations for gene regulation networks in a single cell

Phys Rev E. 2018 Jan;97(1-1):012412. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.97.012412.

Abstract

Studying gene regulation networks in a single cell is an important, interesting, and hot research topic of molecular biology. Such process can be described by chemical master equations (CMEs). We propose a Hamilton-Jacobi equation method with finite-size corrections to solve such CMEs accurately at the intermediate region of switching, where switching rate is comparable to fast protein production rate. We applied this approach to a model of self-regulating proteins [H. Ge et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 078101 (2015)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.114.078101] and found that as a parameter related to inducer concentration increases the probability of protein production changes from unimodal to bimodal, then to unimodal, consistent with phenotype switching observed in a single cell.

MeSH terms

  • Cell Physiological Phenomena
  • Gene Regulatory Networks*
  • Models, Biological*
  • Models, Chemical
  • Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Proteins