Genetic Redundancies Enhance Information Transfer in Noisy Regulatory Circuits
Fig 6
Experimental evidence of the role of genetic redundancies for the transmission of information.
(A) (Top) Regulatory scheme of a synthetic experimental system taken to assess the effect of genetic redundancy on information transfer. An array of N RFPs regulated by LuxR-AHL, implemented through chromosomal integration (N = 1) or plasmids with different copy numbers (N > 1). (Bottom) Dependence of mutual information (MI) with the number of units (N) relative to the system with N = 1 (Materials and Methods). (B) (Left) Regulatory scheme associated to the induction of oocyte maturation in a bistable manner (mediated by GSK3β) by progesterone. (Right) Effect of molecular noise on information transfer. MI for this intrinsically stochastic threshold unit relative to the deterministic case (Materials and Methods). (C) Three examples of genetic regulatory architectures in yeast where redundant genes are coregulated by a common signal. They correspond to pheromone, vitamin B1 and glucose signaling, respectively.