Tutorial 5: Hill functions

On your own:

  1. How does changing n affect the shape of activation and repression Hill functions? Changing K?

  2. Use the provided code to plot mRNA and protein levels of a repressor and its target over time. Describe the shape of the target protein curve. Why does it have that shape?

  3. Use the provided code to plot protein levels of the three genes in the repressilator over time. Describe the pattern you observe.

  4. Optional: What happens to the repressilator when there is no cooperativity (n = 1)? In general, when would you want high cooperativity (large Hill coefficient) in a repressor/activator?

  5. Optional: What happens to the repressilator if the basal expression of each gene is non-zero (alpha_0 > 0)?