Mitigating Transcription Noise Via Protein Sharing in Syncytial Cells

Biophys J. 2024 Mar 8:S0006-3495(24)00174-7. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2024.03.009. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTBursty transcription allows nuclei to concentrate the work of transcribing mRNA into short, intermittent intervals, potentially reducing transcriptional interference. However, bursts of mRNA production can increase noise in protein abundances. Here we formulate models for gene expression in syncytia, or multinucleate cells, showing that protein abundance noise may be mitigated locally via spatial averaging of diffuse proteins. Our modeling shows a universal reduction in protein noise, that increases with the average number of nuclei per cell, and persists even when the number of nuclei is itself a random variable. Experimental data comparing distributions of a cyclin mRNA that is conserved between brewer's yeast and a closely related filamentous fungus Ashbya gossypii confirm that syncytism is permissive of greater levels of transcriptional noise. Our findings suggest that division of transcriptional labor between nuclei allow syncytia to sidestep tradeoffs between efficiency and precision of gene expression.PMID:38459697 | DOI:10.1016/j.bpj.2024.03.009

Source: Biophysical Journal - March 9, 2024 Category: Physics Authors: Alex Mayer Jiayu Li Grace McLaughlin Amy Gladfelter Marcus Roper Source Type: research