Gene-gene cooperativity in small networks

From Q-bio

We infer a reduced qualitative description of interacting genes in small regulatory networks in terms of coupled binary variables. Treating both the protein and gene expression state variable stochastically and on equal footing, we propose a mapping, which connects the molecular level description of networks to the binary approach. We are able to scan phase space and determine when genes can be considered to be independent and when interactions between them cannot be neglected. We find an appropriately mapped Boolean description describes the full probabilities of gene expression states very well. We study the problem on the example of self-activating systems with multiple gene copies.