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EIciRNA‐mediated gene expression: tunability and bimodality
Author(s) -
Hu Qi,
Zhou Tianshou
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1002/1873-3468.13253
Subject(s) - bimodality , messenger rna , gene expression , gene , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , regulation of gene expression , computational biology , genetics , physics , quantum mechanics , galaxy
Biological experiments have verified that EIciRNAs (a class of circRNA) produced from pre‐mRNA can regulate gene expression, but the effect of regulation remains unexplored. Here, we refine a mechanistic gene model from experimental facts, in which we assume pre‐mRNA synthesizes EIciRNAs and mRNAs in a probabilistic manner, with the probability called the pathway strength, and the resulting EIciRNAs positively regulate the pre‐mRNA synthesis. We show that there is a critical pathway strength such that the mRNA mean and the mRNA noise reach the highest and lowest levels, respectively. The EIciRNA can induce the unimodal and bimodal mRNA expressions, as well as the transition between them. Our investigation hints that EIciRNA is a non‐negligible factor affecting cell‐to‐cell variability in gene expression.