Bursty transcription allows nuclei to concentrate the work of transcribing mRNA into short, intermittent intervals, potentially reducing transcriptional interference. However, bursts of mRNA production can increase noise in protein abundances. Here, we formulate models for gene expression in syncytia, or multinucleate cells, showing that protein abundance noise may be mitigated locally via spatial averaging of diffuse proteins. Our modeling shows a universal reduction in protein noise, which increases with the average number of nuclei per cell and persists even when the number of nuclei is itself a random variable. Experimental data comparing distributions of a cyclin mRNA that is conserved between brewer’s yeast and a closely related filamentous fungus confirm that syncytism is permissive of greater levels of transcriptional noise. Our findings suggest that division of transcriptional labor between nuclei allows syncytia to sidestep tradeoffs between efficiency and precision of gene expression.

中文翻译：

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通过合胞细胞中的蛋白质共享减轻转录噪音

突发转录使细胞核能够将 mRNA 的转录工作集中在短的、间歇性的时间间隔内，从而有可能减少转录干扰。然而，mRNA 产生的爆发会增加蛋白质丰度的噪音。在这里，我们制定了合胞体或多核细胞中基因表达的模型，表明可以通过扩散蛋白质的空间平均来局部减轻蛋白质丰度噪声。我们的模型显示蛋白质噪音普遍减少，蛋白质噪音随着每个细胞的平均细胞核数量而增加，并且即使细胞核数量本身是随机变量也持续存在。比较啤酒酵母和密切相关的丝状真菌之间保守的细胞周期蛋白 mRNA 分布的实验数据证实，合胞体允许更高水平的转录噪音。我们的研究结果表明，细胞核之间转录劳动的分工使得合胞体能够回避基因表达效率和精度之间的权衡。