Allosteric switches in transcription regulation

Abstract

Recently it has been shown that genetic regulation in E.Coli can be described by statistical physical models of the transcription factors binding to the DNA. A similar model for the regulation of genes by allosterically regulated proteins is proposed in this work, using the grand ensemble. This model makes plausible predictions for the expression of such a gene and shows that in theory, such genes can have a steeper response curve than genes regulated otherwise. Then this theory is used to make a quantitative model of the regulation of the lac-operon which also leads to plausible predictions. To compare these predictions to experiments more information about the various binding energies in the problem is necessary.