scholarly journals Effects of cell-cycle-dependent expression on random fluctuations in protein levels

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 160578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Soltani ◽  
Abhyudai Singh

Expression of many genes varies as a cell transitions through different cell-cycle stages. How coupling between stochastic expression and cell cycle impacts cell-to-cell variability (noise) in the level of protein is not well understood. We analyse a model where a stable protein is synthesized in random bursts, and the frequency with which bursts occur varies within the cell cycle. Formulae quantifying the extent of fluctuations in the protein copy number are derived and decomposed into components arising from the cell cycle and stochastic processes. The latter stochastic component represents contributions from bursty expression and errors incurred during partitioning of molecules between daughter cells. These formulae reveal an interesting trade-off: cell-cycle dependencies that amplify the noise contribution from bursty expression also attenuate the contribution from partitioning errors. We investigate the existence of optimum strategies for coupling expression to the cell cycle that minimize the stochastic component. Intriguingly, results show that a zero production rate throughout the cell cycle, with expression only occurring just before cell division, minimizes noise from bursty expression for a fixed mean protein level. By contrast, the optimal strategy in the case of partitioning errors is to make the protein just after cell division. We provide examples of regulatory proteins that are expressed only towards the end of the cell cycle, and argue that such strategies enhance robustness of cell-cycle decisions to the intrinsic stochasticity of gene expression.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Soltani ◽  
Abhyudai Singh

AbstractExpression of many genes varies as a cell transitions through different cell-cycle stages. How coupling between stochastic expression and cell cycle impacts cell-to-cell variability (noise) in the level of protein is not well understood. We analyze a model, where a stable protein is synthesized in random bursts, and the frequency with which bursts occur varies within the cell cycle. Formulas quantifying the extent of fluctuations in the protein copy number are derived and decomposed into components arising from the cell cycle and stochastic processes. The latter stochastic component represents contributions from bursty expression and errors incurred during partitioning of molecules between daughter cells. These formulas reveal an interesting trade-off: cell-cycle dependencies that amplify the noise contribution from bursty expression also attenuate the contribution from partitioning errors. We investigate existence of optimum strategies for coupling expression to the cell cycle that minimize the stochastic component. Intriguingly, results show that a zero production rate throughout the cell cycle, with expression only occurring just before cell division minimizes noise from bursty expression for a fixed mean protein level. In contrast, the optimal strategy in the case of partitioning errors is to make the protein just after cell division. We provide examples of regulatory proteins that are expressed only towards the end of cell cycle, and argue that such strategies enhance robustness of cell-cycle decisions to the intrinsic stochasticity of gene expression.


2003 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 348-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Delmas ◽  
Johann Petit ◽  
Jérôme Joubès ◽  
Martial Séveno ◽  
Thomas Paccalet ◽  
...  

2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (15) ◽  
pp. 5165-5173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judit Garriga ◽  
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya ◽  
Joaquim Calbó ◽  
Renée M. Marshall ◽  
May Truongcao ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT CDK9 is a CDC2-related kinase and the catalytic subunit of the positive-transcription elongation factor b and the Tat-activating kinase. It has recently been reported that CDK9 is a short-lived protein whose levels are regulated during the cell cycle by the SCFSKP2 ubiquitin ligase complex (R. E. Kiernan et al., Mol. Cell. Biol. 21:7956-7970, 2001). The results presented here are in contrast to those observations. CDK9 protein levels remained unchanged in human cells entering and progressing through the cell cycle from G0, despite dramatic changes in SKP2 expression. CDK9 levels also remained unchanged in cells exiting from mitosis and progressing through the next cell cycle. Similarly, the levels of CDK9 protein did not change as cells exited the cell cycle and differentiated along various lineages. In keeping with these observations, the kinase activity associated with CDK9 was found to not be regulated during the cell cycle. We have also found that endogenous CDK9 is a very stable protein with a half-life (t 1/2) of 4 to 7 h, depending on the cell type. In contrast, when CDK9 is overexpressed, it is not stabilized and is rapidly degraded, with a t 1/2 of less than 1 h, depending on the level of expression. Treatment of cells with proteasome inhibitors blocked the degradation of short-lived proteins, such as p27, but did not affect the expression of endogenous CDK9. Ectopic overexpression of SKP2 led to reduction of p27 protein levels but had no effect on the expression of endogenous CDK9. Finally, downregulation of endogenous SKP2 gene expression by interfering RNA had no effect on CDK9 protein levels, whereas p27 protein levels increased dramatically. Therefore, the SCFSKP2 ubiquitin ligase does not regulate CDK9 expression in a cell cycle-dependent manner.


2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1900-1911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Santamaría ◽  
Elisabeth Castellanos ◽  
Valentí Gómez ◽  
Patricia Benedit ◽  
Jaime Renau-Piqueras ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT PTOV1 is a mitogenic protein that shuttles between the nucleus and the cytoplasm in a cell cycle-dependent manner. It consists of two homologous domains arranged in tandem that constitute a new class of protein modules. We show here that PTOV1 interacts with the lipid raft protein flotillin-1, with which it copurifies in detergent-insoluble floating fractions. Flotillin-1 colocalized with PTOV1 not only at the plasma membrane but, unexpectedly, also in the nucleus, as demonstrated by immunocytochemistry and subcellular fractionation of endogenous and exogenous flotillin-1. Flotillin-1 entered the nucleus concomitant with PTOV1, shortly before the initiation of the S phase. Protein levels of PTOV1 and flotillin-1 oscillated during the cell cycle, with a peak in S. Depletion of PTOV1 significantly inhibited nuclear localization of flotillin-1, whereas depletion of flotillin-1 did not affect nuclear localization of PTOV1. Depletion of either protein markedly inhibited cell proliferation under basal conditions. Overexpression of PTOV1 or flotillin-1 strongly induced proliferation, which required their localization to the nucleus, and was dependent on the reciprocal protein. These observations suggest that PTOV1 assists flotillin-1 in its translocation to the nucleus and that both proteins are required for cell proliferation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (23) ◽  
pp. 4043-4052 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junyue Xing ◽  
Jie Yi ◽  
Xiaoyu Cai ◽  
Hao Tang ◽  
Zhenyun Liu ◽  
...  

The tRNA methytransferase NSun2 promotes cell proliferation, but the molecular mechanism has not been elucidated. Here, we report that NSun2 regulates cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (CDK1) expression in a cell cycle-dependent manner. Knockdown of NSun2 decreased the CDK1 protein level, while overexpression of NSun2 elevated it without alteringCDK1mRNA levels. Further studies revealed that NSun2 methylatedCDK1mRNAin vitroand in cells and that methylation by NSun2 enhanced CDK1 translation. Importantly, NSun2-mediated regulation of CDK1 expression had an impact on the cell division cycle. These results provide new insight into the regulation of CDK1 during the cell division cycle.


Author(s):  
Heidi M. Blank ◽  
Ophelia Papoulas ◽  
Nairita Maitra ◽  
Riddhiman Garge ◽  
Brian K. Kennedy ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTEstablishing the pattern of abundance of molecules of interest during cell division has been a long-standing goal of cell cycle studies. In several systems, including the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, cell cycle-dependent changes in the transcriptome are well studied. In contrast, few studies queried the proteome during cell division, and they are often plagued by low agreement with each other and with previous transcriptomic datasets. There is also little information about dynamic changes in the levels of metabolites and lipids in the cell cycle. Here, for the first time in any system, we present experiment-matched datasets of the levels of RNAs, proteins, metabolites, and lipids from un-arrested, growing, and synchronously dividing yeast cells. Overall, transcript and protein levels were correlated, but specific processes that appeared to change at the RNA level (e.g., ribosome biogenesis), did not do so at the protein level, and vice versa. We also found no significant changes in codon usage or the ribosome content during the cell cycle. We describe an unexpected mitotic peak in the abundance of ergosterol and thiamine biosynthesis enzymes. Although the levels of several metabolites changed in the cell cycle, by far the most significant changes were in the lipid repertoire, with phospholipids and triglycerides peaking strongly late in the cell cycle. Our findings provide an integrated view of the abundance of biomolecules in the eukaryotic cell cycle and point to a coordinate mitotic control of lipid metabolism.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Soltani ◽  
Cesar Augusto Vargas-Garcia ◽  
Duarte Antunes ◽  
Abhyudai Singh

Inside individual cells, expression of genes is inherently stochastic and manifests as cell-to-cell variability or noise in protein copy numbers. Since proteins half-lives can be comparable to the cell-cycle length, randomness in cell-division times generates additional intercellular variability in protein levels. Moreover, as many mRNA/protein species are expressed at low-copy numbers, errors incurred in partitioning of molecules between the mother and daughter cells are significant. We derive analytical formulas for the total noise in protein levels for a general class of cell-division time and partitioning error distributions. Using a novel hybrid approach the total noise is decomposed into components arising from i) stochastic expression; ii) partitioning errors at the time of cell-division and iii) random cell-division events. These formulas reveal that random cell-division times not only generate additional extrinsic noise but also critically affect the mean protein copy numbers and intrinsic noise components. Counter intuitively, in some parameter regimes noise in protein levels can decrease as cell-division times become more stochastic. Computations are extended to consider genome duplication, where the gene dosage is increased by two-fold at a random point in the cell-cycle. We systematically investigate how the timing of genome duplication influences different protein noise components. Intriguingly, results show that noise contribution from stochastic expression is minimized at an optimal genome duplication time. Our theoretical results motivate new experimental methods for decomposing protein noise levels from single-cell expression data. Characterizing the contributions of individual noise mechanisms will lead to precise estimates of gene expression parameters and techniques for altering stochasticity to change phenotype of individual cells.


2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Schneikert ◽  
Annette Grohmann ◽  
Jürgen Behrens

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