Diffusion of transcription factors can drastically enhance the noise in gene expression

Abstract

We study by simulation the effect of the diffusive motion of repressor molecules on the noise in mRNA and protein levels in the case of a repressed gene. We find that spatial fluctuations due to diffusion can drastically enhance the noise in gene expression. For a fixed repressor strength, the noise due to diffusion can be minimized by increasing the number of repressors or by decreasing the rate of the open complex formation. We also show that the effect of spatial fluctuations can be well described by a two-step kinetic scheme, where formation of an encounter complex by diffusion and the subsequent association reaction are treated separately. Our results also emphasize that power spectra are a highly useful tool for studying the propagation of noise through the different stages of gene expression.