The nonlinear dynamics and fluctuations of mRNA levels in cross-talking pathway activated transcription (Q2341165)

In this paper the authors describe the nonlinear dynamics and fluctuations of mRNA levels in the context of activated transcription between two cross-talking pathways. They also formalize the mathematical setting for the analysis of the transcription efficiency/inefficiency. Following a general description of the biological background, the authors introduce concepts such as the mean number of mRNA molecules, the probability of dynamical transcriptional efficiency and the probability of pathway utilization. Using these, they discuss the second moment of mRNA copy numbers, the characteristics of transcription noise at steady-state and the existence of cross-talking pathways which induce a noisier transcription. The paper concludes with an analysis of the impact of the transcriptional efficiency on noise strength. The authors also include the full proofs of the mentioned theorems in the appendix. The paper is addressed mainly to researchers and requires an extensive background.