Modulation of nuclear and cytoplasmic mRNA fluctuations by time-dependent stimuli: analytical distributions

Abstract Temporal variation of environmental stimuli leads to changes in gene expression. Since the latter is noisy and since many reaction events occur between the birth and death of an mRNA molecule, it is of interest to understand how a stimulus affects the transcript numbers measured at various sub-cellular locations. Here, we construct a stochastic model describing the dynamics of signal-dependent gene expression and its propagation downstream of transcription. For any time-dependent stimulus and assuming bursty gene expression, we devise a procedure which allows us to obtain time-dependent distributions of mRNA numbers at various stages of its life-cycle, e.g. in its nascent form at the transcription site, post-splicing in the nucleus, and after it is exported to the cytoplasm. We also derive an expression for the error in the approximation whose accuracy is verified via stochastic simulation. We find that, depending on the frequency of oscillation and the time of measurement, a stimulus can lead to cytoplasmic amplification or attenuation of transcriptional noise.