Figure 1
Strategies for coding delay times. A schematic description of each strategy is shown on the top panel, while the respective protein dynamics is shown at the bottom panel. The solid black line corresponds to some reference system, while the dashed black line corresponds to a system in which production rates were reduced two-fold. The time to reach the threshold (taken here as 10% of Pmax) is also shown. It can be seen that the delay time sensitivity is largest for accumulation and smallest for non-linear decay. Moreover, the location of the threshold is limited; threshold of 90% (light grey) will never be crossed by a perturbed system with η of less than 0.9. a, Accumulation strategy. In this case gene production is initiated at t = 0. Once a certain threshold is reached, downstream genes would be affected. b, Degradation strategy. In this case, protein production is stopped at t = 0. Once protein levels have decayed below a certain threshold, target genes would be affected. c, Same as b, except that degradation is non-linear with n = 2.