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Target-Specific and Global Effectors in Gene Regulation by MicroRNA

Erel Levine ^*, Eshel Ben Jacob ^*  and Herbert Levine ^*

^* Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California; and School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

Correspondence: Address reprint requests and inquiries to Erel Levine, E-mail: elevine{at}ucsd.edu.

MicroRNAs are responsible for post-transcriptional gene silencing as part of critical cellular pathways and intercellular coordination, for example during embryonic development. Yet, the basic mechanism by which this silencing is accomplished is still not understood. For example, it is not known to what extent and through what process does the suppression of protein accumulation accompany a reduction in mRNA level. Here we present a simple quantitative modeling approach to microRNA mediated silencing. We show how differential responses of the mRNA- and protein levels may be tuned by target-specific parameters and how global effectors may alter this behavior for some—but not all—miRNA targets in the cell.

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