Tradeoffs in gene regulatory networks: the plasmid replication control problem

It has recently been demonstrated within the mathematical biology community how linear noise approximations can be used to analyze intrinsic fluctuations in biological systems. By interpreting the fluctuation dissipation theorem in a noise filtering setting, we illustrate in the paper ways of exploiting conventional tools from robust control theory to reveal tradeoffs in gene regulatory networks. The control of plasmid copy numbers in bacteria is discussed.