Cooperativity leads to temporally-correlated fluctuations in the bacteriophage lambda genetic switch

Abstract

Cooperative interactions are widespread in biochemical networks, providing the nonlinear response that underlies behavior such as ultrasensitivity and robust switching. We introduce a temporal correlation function—the conditional activity—to study the behavior of these phenomena. Applying it to the bistable genetic switch in bacteriophage lambda, we find that cooperative binding between binding sites on the prophage DNA lead to non-Markovian behavior, as quantified by the conditional activity. Previously, the conditional activity has been used to predict allosteric pathways in proteins; here, we show that it identifies the rare unbinding events which underlie induction from lysogeny to lysis.

Additional Information

© 2015 Shenker and Lin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Received: 28 November 2014; Paper pending published: 02 February 2015; Accepted: 17 March 2015; Published: 08 April 2015. Financial support provided by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

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Supplemental Material - data_sheet_1.pdf

Published - fpls-06-00214.pdf

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