| Description |
Genetic oscillators govern periodic phenomena in biology including circadian rhythms and are also the basis of biological clocks used in the design of synthetic genetic circuits. Models of genetic oscillators tend to neglect biological detail, however, because biological systems tend to be too complicated to model efficiently. One way to incorporate additional biological detail into models of genetic oscillators is to use distributed delay differential equations. To investigate the utility of distributed delay differential equations for modeling genetic oscillators, we constructed delayed differential equation models of genetic oscillatory motifs. We found that these models are equivalent to higher-dimension models, which are reflective of more granular biological detail. We also characterized the stability of these models. Our findings may inform future modeling efforts in the domains of synthetic and systems biology, where delayed differential equations could pose advantages over ordinary differential equation models. |
