PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Ye Yuan AU - Lei Wei AU - Tao Hu AU - Shuailin Li AU - Tianrun Cheng AU - Jinzhi Lei AU - Zhen Xie AU - Michael Q. Zhang AU - Xiaowo Wang TI - Quantitative understanding of molecular competition as a hidden layer of gene regulatory network AID - 10.1101/258129 DP - 2018 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 258129 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/23/258129.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/23/258129.full AB - Molecular competition is ubiquitous, essential and multifunctional throughout diverse biological processes. Competition brings about trade-offs of shared limited resources among the cellular components, and it thus introduce a hidden layer of regulatory mechanism by connecting components even without direct physical interactions. By abstracting the analogous competition mechanism behind diverse molecular systems, we built a unified coarse-grained competition motif model to systematically compare experimental evidences in these processes and analyzed general properties shared behind them. We could predict in what molecular environments competition would reveal threshold behavior or display a negative linear dependence. We quantified how competition can shape regulator-target dose-response curve, modulate dynamic response speed, control target expression noise, and introduce correlated fluctuations between targets. This work uncovered the complexity and generality of molecular competition effect, which might act as a hidden regulatory mechanism with multiple functions throughout biological networks in both natural and synthetic systems.