Interrogating the topological robustness of gene regulatory circuits by randomization.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-31-2017

Keywords

Computational Biology, Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, Gene Expression Regulation, Gene Regulatory Networks, Humans, Kinetics, Models, Genetic, Models, Statistical, Random Allocation

JAX Source

PLoS Comput Biol 2017 Mar 31; 13(3):e1005456

Volume

13

Issue

3

First Page

1005456

Last Page

1005456

ISSN

1553-7358

PMID

28362798

Abstract

One of the most important roles of cells is performing their cellular tasks properly for survival. Cells usually achieve robust functionality, for example, cell-fate decision-making and signal transduction, through multiple layers of regulation involving many genes. Despite the combinatorial complexity of gene regulation, its quantitative behavior has been typically studied on the basis of experimentally verified core gene regulatory circuitry, composed of a small set of important elements. It is still unclear how such a core circuit operates in the presence of many other regulatory molecules and in a crowded and noisy cellular environment. Here we report a new computational method, named random circuit perturbation (RACIPE), for interrogating the robust dynamical behavior of a gene regulatory circuit even without accurate measurements of circuit kinetic parameters. RACIPE generates an ensemble of random kinetic models corresponding to a fixed circuit topology, and utilizes statistical tools to identify generic properties of the circuit. By applying RACIPE to simple toggle-switch-like motifs, we observed that the stable states of all models converge to experimentally observed gene state clusters even when the parameters are strongly perturbed. RACIPE was further applied to a proposed 22-gene network of the Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), from which we identified four experimentally observed gene states, including the states that are associated with two different types of hybrid Epithelial/Mesenchymal phenotypes. Our results suggest that dynamics of a gene circuit is mainly determined by its topology, not by detailed circuit parameters. Our work provides a theoretical foundation for circuit-based systems biology modeling. We anticipate RACIPE to be a powerful tool to predict and decode circuit design principles in an unbiased manner, and to quantitatively evaluate the robustness and heterogeneity of gene expression. PLoS Comput Biol 2017 Mar 31; 13(3):e1005456.

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