Noise in Synthetic Cascades

HH McAdams and A Arkin characterized the noise propagation in synthetic cascades. He detailed that stochasticity in gene cascades lies in the time delay for protein accumulation. More specifically after the activation of a gene, to reach an effective level of control over the next gene requires a time for protein signals to acumulate. A threshold of protein control must be achieved in order for the sucessive protein to propagate its signal to the subsequent gene. Becuase proteins are produced in short bursts of variable numbers at random time intervals, there can be large differences in teh time between sucessive events in a regulatory cascade across a cell population. The result of this heterogenity among genetic cascades can be a separation of the cell population into different phenotypes as the cell follow different paths.