Optimal Performance of the Heat-Shock Gene Regulatory Network
| Authors: | Khammash Mustafa, University of California at Santa Barbara, United States
El-Samad Hana, University of California at Santa Barbara, United States
Homescu Chris, University of California at Santa Barbara, United States
Petzold Linda, University of California at Santa Barbara, United States |
|---|
| Topic: | 8.4 Control of Biotechnological Processes |
|---|
| Session: | Systems Biology |
|---|
| Keywords: | Heat Shock, Pareto Optimality, Cost Function, NumericalOptimization, Molecular Networks. |
|---|
Abstract
In this work, we study the optimality principles in the heat shocksystem, a cellular response that refers to the mechanism by whichorganisms react to a sudden increase in the ambient temperature.The consequence of such a temperature increase at the cellularlevel is the unfolding of cell proteins, which threatens the lifeof the cell. This increase in damaged proteins is usuallycounteracted by a simultaneous increase in the level of the socalled heat shock proteins that are necessary for proteinrefolding. Their production, however, is metabolically costly andthe benefits should be constantly balanced with the cost. Buildingon a heat shock model we have developed in previous work, we formulate and solve a multi-objective optimization problemwhere both the cost of producing and maintaining HSPs and the costof unfolded proteins are considered as optimization criteria.
