Precision of Readout at the hunchback Gene: Analyzing Short Transcription Time Traces in Living Fly Embryos
Fig 4
The gene expression model used in the autocorrelation function calculation.
The autocorrelation inference approach is based on the idea that the stochastic transcriptional dynamics can be deconvoluted from the signal coming from the deterministic fluorescent construct, if we know the gene construct design. (A) A concatenation of snapshots of the gene from r consecutive time steps. A polymerase covers a length on the gene corresponding to its own length in one time step, producing about two MS2 loops. The gene has total length r and at any position i along the gene Li < 24 loops have been produced. (Top right) The promoter state as a function of time and (center right) an instantaneous snapshot of the gene corresponding to transcription from this promoter. (B) The construct design is encoded in the loop function Li. As the polymerase moves along the gene it produces MS2 loops. Li is an average representation in terms of polymerase time steps of how many loops have been produced by a single polymerase. It is based on the experimental design shown on the left of the panel.