Environmental noise-induced synchronized switching between gene states

Previous studies have shown that quorum-sensing mechanism in bacteria can induce synchronization (including stochastic synchronization and synchronized switching) of interacting multicellular systems. In this paper, we investigate how behaviors of a noisy microscopic molecule affect the macroscopic behaviors of uncoupled multicellular genetic toggle switches. We find that in the case of homogeneous cells, a common noisy signaling molecule can induce synchronized switching across an ensemble of independent genetic toggle switches in Escherichia coil, whereas in the case of heterogeneous cells, environmental noise can induce synchronized switching, and there is an optimal noise intensity for achieving optimal coherent switching.