RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Time-scale separation and stochasticity conspire to impact phenotypic dynamics in the canonical and inverted Bacillus subtilis core genetic regulation circuits JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 245795 DO 10.1101/245795 A1 Lijie Hao A1 Zhuoqin Yang A1 Marc Turcotte YR 2018 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/10/245795.abstract AB In this work, we study two seemingly unrelated aspects of core genetic nonlinear dynamical control of the competence phenotype in Bacillus subtilis, a common Gram-positive bacterium living in the soil. We focus on hitherto unchartered aspects of the dynamics by exploring the effect of time scale separation between transcription and translation and, as well, the effect of intrinsic molecular stochasticity. We consider these aspects of regulatory control as two possible evolutionary handles. Hence, using theory and computations, we study how the onset of oscillations breaks the excitability-based competence phenotype in two topologically close evolutionary competing circuits: the canonical “wild-type” regulation circuit selected by Evolution and, the indirect-feedback inverted circuit that failed to be selected by Evolution, as was shown elsewhere, due to dynamical reasons.