Intrinsic and extrinsic noise are distinguishable in a synthesis - export - degradation model of mRNA production

Abstract

Intrinsic and extrinsic noise sources in gene expression, originating respectively from transcriptional stochasticity and from differences between cells, complicate the determination of transcriptional models. In particularly degenerate cases, the two noise sources are altogether impossible to distinguish. However, the incorporation of downstream processing, such as the mRNA splicing and export implicated in gene expression buffering, recovers the ability to identify the relevant source of noise. We report analytical copy-number distributions, discuss the noise sources qualitative effects on lower moments, and provide simulation routines for both models.