New paper: effective models for understanding the interplay of gene expression noise and cell size
We often seek simple, effective models to understand the behaviour of complex systems. To understand gene expression in cells, for example, it is often assumed that effective dilution reactions and extrinsic noise sources affect intracellular concentrations. We develop a theory of cellular agents that grow and divide to investigate how intracellular reaction networks are affected by stochasticity in cell size dynamics and division. We show that stochastic concentration homeostasis - an extension of deterministic concentration homeostasis - guarantees the validity of the effective models, and demonstrate where effective cell models fail and where they perform well.
Read more: Royal Soc Interface 18, 20210274