Heterogeneous recruitment abilities to RNA polymerases generate nonlinear scaling of gene expression with cell volume
Qirun Wang and
Jie Lin ()
Additional contact information
Qirun Wang: Peking University
Jie Lin: Peking University
Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-11
Abstract:
Abstract While most genes’ expression levels are proportional to cell volumes, some genes exhibit nonlinear scaling between their expression levels and cell volume. Therefore, their mRNA and protein concentrations change as the cell volume increases, which often have crucial biological functions such as cell-cycle regulation. However, the biophysical mechanism underlying the nonlinear scaling between gene expression and cell volume is still unclear. In this work, we show that the nonlinear scaling is a direct consequence of the heterogeneous recruitment abilities of promoters to RNA polymerases based on a gene expression model at the whole-cell level. Those genes with weaker (stronger) recruitment abilities than the average ability spontaneously exhibit superlinear (sublinear) scaling with cell volume. Analysis of the promoter sequences and the nonlinear scaling of Saccharomyces cerevisiae’s mRNA levels shows that motifs associated with transcription regulation are indeed enriched in genes exhibiting nonlinear scaling, in concert with our model.
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26952-y Abstract (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-26952-y
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26952-y
Access Statistics for this article
Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie
More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().