1 research outputs found
Efficiency, Robustness and Stochasticity of Gene Regulatory Networks in Systems Biology: lambda Switch as a Working Example
Phage lambda is one of the most studied biological models in modern molecular
biology. Over the past 50 years quantitative experimental knowledge on this
biological model has been accumulated at all levels: physics, chemistry,
genomics, proteomics, functions, and more. All its components have been known
to a great detail. The theoretical task has been to integrate its components to
make the organism working quantitatively in a harmonic manner. This would test
our biological understanding and would lay a solid fundamental for further
explorations and applications, an obvious goal of systems biology. One of the
outstanding challenges in doing so has been the so-called stability puzzle of
lambda switch: the biologically observed robustness and its difficult
mathematical reconstruction based on known experimental values. In this chapter
we review the recent theoretical and experimental efforts on tackling this
problem. An emphasis is put on the minimum quantitative modeling where a
successful numerical agreement between experiments and modeling has been
achieved. A novel method tentatively named stochastic dynamical structure
analysis emerged from such study is also discussed within a broad modeling
perspective.Comment: 40 page