EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Volume 2007 (2007), Article ID 25250, 10 pages
doi:10.1155/2007/25250
Research Article

IκB, NF-κB Regulation Model: Simulation Analysis of Small Number of Molecules

Anamika Sarkar,1,2 Marina Meila,3 and Robert B. Franza1

1Bioengineering Department, Cell Systems Initiative, University of Washington, Seattle 98195, WA, USA
2Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, P.O. Box 1215, One Gustave L. Levy Place, New York 10029, NY, USA
3Statistics Department, University of Washington, Seattle 98195, WA, USA

Received 21 March 2007; Revised 27 August 2007; Accepted 8 November 2007

Academic Editor: Yue Wang

Copyright © 2007 Anamika Sarkar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The regulation of IκB, NF-κB is of foremost interest in biology as the transcription factor NF-κB has multiple target genes. We have modeled a previously published model by Hoffmann et al. (2002) of IκB, NF-κB mathematically as discrete reaction systems. We have used stochastic algorithm to compare the results when there are large and small numbers of molecules available in a finite volume for each protein. Our results for small number of molecules show that with continuous presence of stimulation, nuclear NF-κB oscillates continuously in every individual cell rather than damping, which was observed in cell population results. This characteristic of the system is missed when averaged behavior is studied.