Physical Society Colloquium

Schrödinger's cell:
Sources and consequences of noise in gene expression dynamics

Nicolas Buchler

College of Veterinary Medicine
North Carolina State University

Single-cell experiments show that gene expression is stochastic and bursty, a feature that can emerge for processes involving small numbers of molecules (e.g. DNA) or slow processes (e.g. protein binding to DNA), where the system cannot average over a large ensemble or over time. How do living organisms maintain robust dynamical functions under the influence of this intrinsic noise? In this talk, I will describe useful approaches (e.g. piecewise deterministic Markov processes) to study the stochastic dynamics of biological oscillators, such as the circadian clock, and possible mechanisms to sustain a coherent oscillation under the influence of noise. The next question we investigate is, can the living organism ‘manipulate’ noise to perform better? I will show how living systems can potentially take advantage of gene expression noise to rapidly search for and evolve new functions.