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Título del libro: New Trends In Statistical Physics: Festschrift In Honor Of Leopoldo Garcia-Colin's 80th Birthday
Título del capítulo: Non-equilibrium thermodynamics of transcriptional bursts

Autores UNAM:
ENRIQUE HERNANDEZ LEMUS;
Autores externos:

Idioma:
Inglés
Año de publicación:
2010
Resumen:

Gene transcription or Gene Expression (GE) is the process which transforms the information encoded in DNA into a functional RNA message. It is known that GE can occur in bursts or pulses. Transcription is irregular, with strong periods of activity, interspersed by long periods of inactivity. If we consider the average behavior over millions of cells, this process appears to be continuous. But at the individual cell level, there is considerable variability, and for most genes, very little activity at any one time. Some have claimed that GE bursting can account for the high variability in gene expression occurring between cells in isogenic populations. This variability has a big impact on cell behavior and thus on phenotypic conditions and disease. In view of these facts, the development of a thermodynamic framework to study gene expression and transcriptional regulation to integrate the vast amount of molecular biophysical GE data is appealing. Application of such thermodynamic formalism is useful to observe various dissipative phenomena in GE regulatory dynamics. In this chapter we will examine at some detail the complex phenomena of transcriptional bursts (specially of a certain class of anomalous bursts) in the context of a non-equilibrium thermodynamics formalism and will make some initial comments on the relevance of some irreversible processes that may be connected to anomalous transcriptional bursts. © 2010 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.


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