Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 4: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems II (joint BP, DY)

BP 4.10: Talk

Monday, March 22, 2010, 16:45–17:00, H45

Intrinsic fluctuations in stochastic delay models of gene regulation — •Tobias Galla — Theoretical Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

We study the effects of intrinsic noise on stochastic delay systems within an expansion in the inverse system size. It is shown that the stochastic nature of the underlying dynamics can induce sustained quasi-cycles in parameter ranges where the deterministic system does not show oscillatory behaviour. We compute the power spectra of these stochastic oscillations analytically, in good agreement with simulations. The theory is applied to a simple gene regulatory system representing the basic motif of an auto-inhibitory feedback loop and motivated by its relevance to somite segmentation. Such systems often contain only a small number of molecules, leading to significant fluctuations in mRNA and protein concentrations, and the proposed mechanism of enhanced stochastic oscillations may therefore be applicable.

Reference: Tobias Galla, Phys. Rev. E 80 (2009) 021909