Investigation of oscillation accumulation triggered genetic switch in gene regulatory networks

•We propose an oscillation accumulation triggered genetic switch (OATGS).•We show the OATGS with features of robustness to noise and triggered mode.•The result shows that there is an OATGS in p53 gene regulatory networks.•We speculate that the OATGS is a new important biological function switch.

Genetic oscillator motifs and genetic switch motifs are blocks of biochemical reaction networks, which are involved in the regulation of rhythms, cell cycle progression, signal processing and cell fate decision. These motifs often interact to constitute complex signal processing systems. There widely exists the oscillation accumulation triggered mechanism in gene regulatory networks, i.e., an oscillator promotes the accumulation of a signaling protein over a threshold value, and activates a switch. The structure can be fund in some important biological function switches, such as apoptosis and DNA repair. We propose the structure as an oscillation accumulation triggered genetic switch (OATGS). Through mathematical modeling and analysis, results show the OATGS with features of robustness to noise and triggered mode. In addition, we show the existence of OATGS features and triggered manner in p53 gene regulatory networks, and explain some of the p53 regulation process, such as counting mechanism and pulse shape. We speculate that OATGS with oscillation accumulation triggered manner is a new important biological function switch.