Effects of microRNA Regulation on Noise in Gene Expression
| Autor: | Hung-Chung Wu, 吳鴻中 |
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| Rok vydání: | 2010 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 98 Gene expression can be viewed as a stochastic process and has been observed to behave with intrinsic noise in single-cell processes. Recently, a new class of small molecules, microRNA (miRNA), has emerged as another important regulator on gene expression at post-transcriptional level. However, the effects of miRNA regulation on gene expression fluctuations remain elusive. Based on a stochastic gene expression model, we constructed simple gene regulatory networks involving miRNA feedback or feed-forward loops, and performed Monte-Carlo simulation to study its noise behavior. We found that, although miRNA regulation plays a minor role in the gene regulatory network than transcription factors, adding miRNA into the regulatory network still suppresses the stochastic fluctuations of gene expression. Furthermore, miRNA regulation through mRNA degradation reduces protein abundance more efficiently than protein translation inhibition, so miRNA feed-forward loops not only decrease the intrinsic noise of the gene network but also adjust the response time of the system. Our work suggests that miRNA regulation indeed helps maintaining robustness of gene expression in biological systems. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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