ArticleBiophysical journal2016
Universal Poisson Statistics of mRNAs with Complex Decay Pathways.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A minimal model for the role of Rim4 in regulating meiotic exit in budding yeast.Molecular biology of the cell · 2026Article
- Two-State Stochastic Model of In Vivo Observations of Transcriptional Bursts.Brazilian journal of physics · 2025Article
- Analysis of a detailed multi-stage model of stochastic gene expression using queueing theory and model reduction.Mathematical biosciences · 2024Article
- Solving stochastic gene-expression models using queueing theory: A tutorial review.Biophysical journal · 2024Review
- The minimal intrinsic stochasticity of constitutively expressed eukaryotic genes is sub-Poissonian.Science advances · 2023Article
- A subcellular biochemical model for T6SS dynamics reveals winning competitive strategies.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- The minimal intrinsic stochasticity of constitutively expressed eukaryotic genes is sub-Poissonian.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Bayesian inference of gene expression states from single-cell RNA-seq data.Nature biotechnology · 2021Article
- Trajectory-based energy landscapes of gene regulatory networks.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
- Article
- Stochastic system identification without an a priori chosen kinetic model-exploring feasible cell regulation with piecewise linear functions.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2018Article
- Cell-Size-Dependent Transcription of FLC and Its Antisense Long Non-coding RNA COOLAIR Explain Cell-to-Cell Expression Variation.Cell systems · 2017Article
- Effects of cell-cycle-dependent expression on random fluctuations in protein levels.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
Messenger RNA (mRNA) dynamics in single cells are often modeled as a memoryless birth-death process with a constant probability per unit time that an mRNA molecule is synthesized or degraded. This predicts a Poisson steady-state distribution of mRNA number, in close agreement with experiments. This is surprising, since mRNA decay is known to be a complex process. The paradox is resolved by realizing that the Poisson steady state generalizes to arbitrary mRNA lifetime distributions. A mapping between mRNA dynamics and queueing theory highlights an identifiability problem: a measured Poisson steady state is consistent with a large variety of microscopic models. Here, I provide a rigorous and intuitive explanation for the universality of the Poisson steady state. I show that the mRNA birth-death process and its complex decay variants all take the form of the familiar Poisson law of rare events, under a nonlinear rescaling of time. As a corollary, not only steady-states but also transients are Poisson distributed. Deviations from the Poisson form occur only under two conditions, promoter fluctuations leading to transcriptional bursts or nonindependent degradation of mRNA molecules. These results place severe limits on the power of single-cell experiments to probe microscopic mechanisms, and they highlight the need for single-molecule measurements.
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