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Simulating the Temporal Modulation of Inducible DNA Damage Response in Escherichia coli

Center for Theoretical Biology and Department of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China

Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Qi Ouyang, E-mail: qi{at}pku.edu.cn.

Living organisms make great efforts to maintain their genetic information integrity. However, DNA is vulnerable to many chemical or physical agents. To rescue the cell timely and effectively, the DNA damage response system must be well controlled. Recently, single cell experiments showing that after DNA damage, expression of the key DNA damage response regulatory protein oscillates with time. This phenomenon is observed both in eukaryotic and bacterial cells. We establish a model to simulate the DNA damage response (SOS response) in bacterial cell Escherichia coli. The simulation results are compared to the experimental data. Our simulation results suggest that the modulation observed in the experiment is due to the fluctuation of inducing signal, which is coupled with DNA replication. The inducing signal increases when replication is blocked by DNA damage and decreases when replication resumes.