Timing effciency in small-RNA-regulated post-transcriptional processes

Gene regulation in a cellular environment is a stochastic phenomenon leading to a large variability in mRNAs and protein numbers that are often produced in bursts. The regulation leading to varied protein dynamics can be ascribed to transcriptional or post-transcriptional mechanisms. In transcriptional regulation, the gene dynamically switches between an active and an inactive state, while in the post-transcriptional regulation small RNAs tune the activity of mRNAs. In either scenario, it is possible to calculate the time-dependent probability distribution of proteins and address the interesting question pertaining to their first passage time statistics. The coefficient of variation of first passage time can be considered to be an indicator of efficiency in controlling regulatory pathways and we show that post-transcriptional regulation performs better than simple transcriptional regulation for comparable protein yields.