Noise-reduction through interaction in gene expression and biochemical reaction processes

We demonstrate that interaction in gene expression and biochemical reaction processes has a significant influence on reducing fluctuations. Especially, we have found that the interaction between synthesized proteins and background molecules can reduce the fluctuation level in gene expression, which is a counter example to the intuition that background factors disturb information processing in genetic networks by increasing the noise level. This fact also indicates that the macromolecular crowding observed in actual cells can contribute to reduce the noise level. In addition, the noise-reduction phenomenon is not limited to the interaction between the proteins and background molecules, but can be applied to other reactions such as a dimerization process and the coupling of reactions with large fluctuations by intrinsic noise. Finally, on the basis of these results, we propose a new and plausible method for reducing the fluctuations generated in synthesized genetic networks, and also discuss the applicability of this method to the stabilization of system dynamics by using a toggle switch model. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.