Limitations and trade-offs in gene expression due to competition for shared cellular resources
Author(s)
Gyorgy, Andras; Del Vecchio, Domitilla
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Gene circuits share transcriptional and translational resources in the cell. The fact that these common resources are available only in limited amounts leads to unexpected couplings in protein expressions. As a result, our predictive ability of describing the behavior of gene circuits is limited. In this paper, we consider the simultaneous expression of proteins and describe the coupling among protein concentrations due to competition for RNA polymerase and ribosomes. In particular, we identify the limitations and trade-offs in gene expression by characterizing the attainable combinations of protein concentrations. We further present two application examples of our results: we show that even in the absence of regulatory linkages, genes can seemingly behave as repressors, and surprisingly, as activators to each other, purely due to the limited availability of shared cellular resources.
Date issued
2014-12Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical EngineeringJournal
Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Citation
Gyorgy, Andras, and Domitilla Del Vecchio. “Limitations and Trade-Offs in Gene Expression Due to Competition for Shared Cellular Resources.” 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (December 2014).
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISBN
978-1-4673-6090-6
978-1-4799-7746-8
978-1-4799-7745-1