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A Quantitative Study of -Phage SWITCH and Its Components

Center for Theoretical Biology and School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

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

We propose what we believe is a new model to quantitatively describe the -phage SWITCH system. The model incorporates facilitated transfer mechanism of transcription factor, which can be simplified into a two-step reaction. We first sequentially obtain two indispensable parameters by fitting our model to experimental data of two simple systems, and then apply them to study the natural -SWITCH system. By incorporating the facilitated transfer mechanism, we find that in RecA^– host Escherichia coli, the wild-type -lysogenic state is in a monostable regime rather than in a bistable regime. Furthermore, the model explains the weak role of Cro protein and probably sheds light on the evolution of -Cro protein, which is known to be structurally distinct from the other Cros in lambdoid family members.