Evaluating the Drosophila Bicoid morphogen gradient system through dissecting the noise in transcriptional bursts.

ABSTRACT:

Motivation

We describe a statistical model to dissect the noise in transcriptional bursts in a developmental system.

Results

We assume that, at any given moment of time, each copy of a native gene inside a cell can exist in either a bursting (active) or non-bursting (inactive) state. The experimentally measured total noise in the transcriptional states of a gene in a population of cells can be mathematically dissected into two contributing components: internal and external. While internal noise quantifies the stochastic nature of transcriptional bursts, external noise is caused by cell-to-cell differences including fluctuations in activator concentration. We use our developed methods to analyze the Drosophila Bicoid (Bcd) morphogen gradient system. For its target gene hunchb

SUBMITTER: He F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3315720 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature