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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Describing a Transcription Factor Dependent Regulation of the MicroRNA Transcriptome
Published on: June 15, 2016
Non-equilibrium phase transition in a model for supercoiling-dependent DNA transcription
A Bentivoglio1, M Ancona, C A Brackley
1SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Peter Guthrie Tait Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, UK. A.Bentivoglio@sms.ed.ac.uk.
Abstract:
We study a variant of a recently proposed non-equilibrium stochastic model for supercoiling-dependent transcription in DNA. In the case of a circular DNA molecule with overall positive supercoiling, we find a non-equilibrium phase transition between an absorbing phase, where all genes are switched off due to the supercoiling, and an active phase with a non-zero transcription rate. Mean field theory predicts that the transition should be continuous at a critical value of the background supercoiling, and we focus our analysis on this case. Our simulations suggest that the switch between the transcribed and silent phases may actually be a fluctuation-induced discontinuous transition, where the jump in the transcription rate decreases with the number of genes in the system.
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