The effect of negative feedback on noise propagation in transcriptional gene networks

This paper analyzes how the delay and repression strength of negative feedback in single-gene and multigene transcriptional networks influences intrinsic noise propagation and oscillatory behavior. We simulate a variety of transcriptional networks using a stochastic model and report two main findings. First, intrinsic noise is not attenuated by the addition of negative or positive feedback to transcriptional cascades. Second, for multigene negative feedback networks, synchrony in oscillations among a cell population can be improved by increasing network depth and tightening the regulation at one of the repression stages. Our long term goal is to understand how the noise characteristics of complex networks can be derived from the properties of modules that are used to compose these networks.