Dynamics of miRNA driven feed-forward loop depends upon miRNA action mechanisms

BMC Genomics

Research

Maria G Samsonova¹  Alexander M Samsonov²  Maria A Duk² 

[1] St.Petersburg State Polytechnical University, 29, Polytekhnicheskaya st, 195251, St.Petersburg, Russia;The loffe Physical Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 26, Polytekhnicheskaya st, 194021, St.Petersburg, Russia;St.Petersburg State Polytechnical University, 29, Polytekhnicheskaya st, 195251, St.Petersburg, Russia;

关键词: dynamic behaviour;    feed-forward loop;    miRNA;    noise buffering;    non-linear equations;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-15-S12-S9

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWe perform the theoretical analysis of a gene network sub-system, composed of a feed-forward loop, in which the upstream transcription factor regulates the target gene via two parallel pathways: directly, and via interaction with miRNA.ResultsAs the molecular mechanisms of miRNA action are not clear so far, we elaborate three mathematical models, in which miRNA either represses translation of its target or promotes target mRNA degradation, or is not re-used, but degrades along with target mRNA. We examine the feed-forward loop dynamics quantitatively at the whole time interval of cell cycle. We rigorously proof the uniqueness of solutions to the models and obtain the exact solutions in one of them analytically.ConclusionsWe have shown that different mechanisms of miRNA action lead to a variety of types of dynamical behavior of feed-forward loops. In particular, we found that the ability of feed-forward loop to dampen fluctuations introduced by transcription factor is the model and parameter dependent feature. We also discuss how our results could help a biologist to infer the mechanism of miRNA action.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Duk et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.