Natural biased coin encoded in the genome determines cell strategy.

Faezeh Dorri,Ali Sharifi-Zarchi,Hamid Mahini,Mehdi Totonchi,Ruzbeh Tusserkani,Hamid Pezeshk,Mehdi Sadeghi,Rachata Muneepeerakul

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0103569

Abstract

Decision making at a cellular level determines different fates for isogenic cells. However, it is not yet clear how rational decisions are encoded in the genome, how they are transmitted to their offspring, and whether they evolve and become optimized throughout generations. In this paper, we use a game theoretic approach to explain how rational decisions are made in the presence of cooperators and competitors. Our results suggest the existence of an internal switch that operates as a biased coin. The biased coin is, in fact, a biochemical bistable network of interacting genes that can flip to one of its stable states in response to different environmental stimuli. We present a framework to describe how the positions of attractors in such a gene regulatory network correspond to the behavior of a rational player in a competing environment. We evaluate our model by considering lysis/lysogeny decision making of bacteriophage lambda in E. coli.

Highlights

How do organisms adapt in order to survive in ever-changing environments? In this process, one important factor is mutation that affects the survival of organisms through proper genotypic changes
We demonstrate that for every internal, signal the weights of edges in the gene regulatory network are changed such that the probability distribution q of the corresponding dynamical system is almost the same as the mixed strategy s of the corresponding game
To model the decision making process of bacteriophage lambda, some parameters are more prominent in the final state of bacteriophage

Summary

Introduction

How do organisms adapt in order to survive in ever-changing environments? In this process, one important factor is mutation that affects the survival of organisms through proper genotypic changes. Some environmental fluctuations happen so quickly that there is not enough time for the organism to adapt itself through appropriate mutations. Other studies have shown that phenotypic variation exists, not as a consequence of underlying heritable genetic variation, but as an independent way of adapting to an ever-changing environment [5,6,7,8,9]. They discovered that cells with the same genotype can play different strategies and exhibit different phenotypes even when they are living in an identical environment

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