I was thinking that the shortest feedback loop should be a gene which produces a transcription factor (TF) which in turn down regulates the expression of the gene.
This may seem a bit pointless, but perhaps the same TF with some other co-factor(s) regulates other gene expressions as well and, therefore, its expression needs to be tightly controlled.
Could anyone point me to such examples?
Thank you.
Dear Jens,
Look into p53-mdm2 autoregulatory feedback loop in which p53 transcriptionally regulates mdm2, which controls the activity of p53..
Hi Bünyamin,
that involves 2 partners (p53 and mdm2).
Very short loop already.
Thank you
Anyone up to beat this with a single gene feedback loop?
The Mef2 and twi genes in Drosophila development are both single gene feedback loops. You can find other examples and details on the consequences of feedback loops in Transcriptional autoregulation in development (Crew & Pearson, 2009) and Uri Alon's book An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits.
What about ZNF143 ? High levels of ZNF143 activate transcription of other target genes but inhibit its own transcription generating a trancript with an alternative transcription start site. In contrast, low levels of ZNF143 up-regulates its own transcription, which leads to induction of target genes.
Article Transcription factor abundance controlled by an auto-regulat...
BA
Viral Infections are counted ? Viral proteins work like TFs are too powerful that need to controlled fast. One such example is IE2 of cytomegalovirus can work like even human TFIID (used as TFIID subunit) and also viral Transcription factor at the same time :) powerful but that should be controlled so virus feedback loop fast as the cell should be perfect slave should not die fast or completely leave without chains. So basically TFIID subunit homologs of viral proteins is also counted for your question ? If counted IE2 of cytomegalovirus has a fast feedback inhibition :)
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