Reliability of transcriptional cycles and the yeast cell-cycle oscillator.
Abstract
A recently published transcriptional oscillator associated with the yeast cell cycle
provides clues and raises questions about the mechanisms underlying autonomous cyclic
processes in cells. Unlike other biological and synthetic oscillatory networks in
the literature, this one does not seem to rely on a constitutive signal or positive
auto-regulation, but rather to operate through stable transmission of a pulse on a
slow positive feedback loop that determines its period. We construct a continuous-time
Boolean model of this network, which permits the modeling of noise through small fluctuations
in the timing of events, and show that it can sustain stable oscillations. Analysis
of simpler network models shows how a few building blocks can be arranged to provide
stability against fluctuations. Our findings suggest that the transcriptional oscillator
in yeast belongs to a new class of biological oscillators.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/4452Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000842Publication Info
Sevim, Volkan; Gong, Xinwei; & Socolar, Joshua ES (2010). Reliability of transcriptional cycles and the yeast cell-cycle oscillator. PLoS computational biology, 6(7). pp. e1000842. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000842. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/4452.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Joshua Socolar
Professor of Physics
Prof. Socolar is interested in collective behavior in condensed matter and dynamical
systems. His current research interests include:
Limit-periodic structures, quasicrystals, packing problems, and tiling theory;
Self-assembly and phases of designed colloidal particles;
Organization and dynamics of complex networks;
Topological elasticity of mechanical lattices.

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