Figure 3.

(a) The effect of distributed delay on the protein production process. The “input process” is the first step in the transcription process, while the “output process” is the final mature product that enters the population. The time delay τ accounts for the lag between the initialization of transcription and the production of mature product. In a system with distributed delay, different production events can have different delay times; the order of the output process may therefore not match that of the input process. (b)–(e) Simulated gene regulatory network motifs: a transcriptional cascade (b), oscillators (c), and metastable systems (d) and (e).