Variety of dynamical regimes in a population of coupled synthetic genetic oscillators
Alexey Zaikin, Juergen Kurths, Juliane Liepe, Aneta Koseska
In this work we review our results on the interplay between stochasticity and intercell coupling in a population of synthetic genetic oscillators with relaxator dynamics. We have shown that control of the coupling strength and noise can effectively change the dynamics of the system, leading to the large variety of different dynamical regimes such as clustering, synchronous and asynchronous oscillations, and noise-induced suppression. Moreover, under certain conditions an optimal amount of noise can lead to increased order in the system, demostrating the effect of coherence resonance.
In contrast to the previous studies which are mainly focused on synchronized behavior of communicating genetic units, we discuss the question: which mechanisms can be responsible for multirhythmicity in globally coupled genetic units? We have shown that an autoinducer intercell communication system that provides coupling between synthetic genetic oscillators will inherently lead to multirhythmicity and the appearance of several coexisting dynamical regimes. Furthermore, we propose a new mechanism for quantized production time in a network of coupled relaxators, based on the interplay of cell-cell communication and stochasticity. Noteworthy, inhomogeneity can be used to enhance such quantizing effects, while the degree of variability obtained can be controlled using the noise intensity or adequate system parameters.