Controlling gene expression timing through gene regulatory architecture
Fig 1
Mean first passage time in a self regulated gene.
(A) Schematic of a self-regulating gene. (B) Schematic showing the reactions of TF binding/unbinding to competing decoy sites. (C) Reactions of a target gene regulated by the auto-regulatory TF gene. (D) Number of genes activated (blue bars) or repressed (red bars) by some known autoregulated TFs in E. coli. Data is taken from RegulonDB [54]. (E) First passage time is defined as the time for the gene expression to hit the threshold for the first time as shown here. For an auto-regulated gene, the mean first passage time (MFPT) and the distribution of FPT strongly depend on the strength of auto-regulation (α) and the TF-binding affinity.