Abstract

Gene expression is an example of a complex multistep cellular reaction, where variability in reaction outcome can convey distinct phenotypic properties. Results show that about 85% of genes across diverse promoters, genomic loci, and cell types (human and mouse) exhibit a high degree of rate-driven noise amplification. An additional cytoplasmic noise-amplification step leads to large variability in protein levels. This raises the important question of how efficient noise attenuation can be achieved, for example during human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) fate-commitment. Our data reveals that after a noise-driven event, HIV implements an efficient post-transcriptional negative-feedback which minimizes gene expression variability and stabilizes viral fate.