where
η
X
{\displaystyle \eta _{X}}
is the noise in a quantity
X
{\displaystyle X}
,
μ
X
{\displaystyle \mu _{X}}
is the mean value of
X
{\displaystyle X}
and
σ
X
{\displaystyle \sigma _{X}}
is the standard deviation of
X
{\displaystyle X}
. This measure is dimensionless, allowing a relative comparison of the importance of noise, without necessitating knowledge of the absolute mean.
The first experimental account and analysis of gene expression noise in prokaryotes is from Becskei & Serrano and from Alexander van Oudenaarden's lab. The first experimental account and analysis of gene expression noise in eukaryotes is from James J. Collins's lab.
Intrinsic and extrinsic noise levels are often compared in dual reporter studies, in which the expression levels of two identically regulated genes (often fluorescent reporters like GFP and YFP) are plotted for each cell in a population.
An issue with the general depiction of extrinsic noise as a spread along the main diagonal in dual-reporter studies is the assumption that extrinsic factors cause positive expression correlations between the two reporters. In fact, when the two reporters compete for binding of a low-copy regulator, the two reporters become anomalously anticorrelated, and the spread is perpendicular to the main diagonal. In fact, any deviation of the dual-reporter scatter plot from circular symmetry indicates extrinsic noise. Information theory offers a way to avoid this anomaly.
Note that extrinsic noise can affect levels and types of intrinsic noise: for example, extrinsic differences in the mitochondrial content of cells lead, through differences in ATP levels, to some cells transcribing faster than others, affecting the rates of gene expression and the magnitude of intrinsic noise across the population.
As many quantities of cell biological interest are present in discrete copy number within the cell (single DNAs, dozens of mRNAs, hundreds of proteins), tools from discrete stochastic mathematics are often used to analyse and model cellular noise. In particular, master equation treatments – where the probabilities
P
(
x
,
t
)
{\displaystyle P(\mathbf {x} ,t)}
of observing a system in a state
x
{\displaystyle \mathbf {x} }
at time
t
{\displaystyle t}
are linked through ODEs – have proved particularly fruitful. A canonical model for noise gene expression, where the processes of DNA activation, transcription and translation are all represented as Poisson processes with given rates, gives a master equation which may be solved exactly (with generating functions) under various assumptions or approximated with stochastic tools like Van Kampen's system size expansion.
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