Bursty transcription allows nuclei to concentrate the work of transcribing mRNA into short, intermittent intervals, potentially reducing transcriptional interference. However, bursts of mRNA production can increase noise in protein abundances. Here, we formulate models for gene expression in syncytia, or multinucleate cells, showing that protein abundance noise may be mitigated locally via spatial averaging of diffuse proteins. Our modeling shows a universal reduction in protein noise, which increases with the average number of nuclei per cell and persists even when the number of nuclei is itself a random variable. Experimental data comparing distributions of a cyclin mRNA that is conserved between brewer's yeast and a closely related filamentous fungus Ashbya gossypii confirm that syncytism is permissive of greater levels of transcriptional noise. Our findings suggest that division of transcriptional labor between nuclei allows syncytia to sidestep tradeoffs between efficiency and precision of gene expression.
Keyphrases
- gene expression
- transcription factor
- air pollution
- binding protein
- induced apoptosis
- cell cycle arrest
- protein protein
- dna methylation
- amino acid
- single cell
- healthcare
- stem cells
- cell death
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- signaling pathway
- social media
- oxidative stress
- artificial intelligence
- cell cycle
- low grade
- deep learning
- heat stress
- data analysis
- health information