  Transcription factors perform facilitated diffusion (3D diffusion in the
cytosol and 1D diffusion on the DNA) when binding to their target sites to
regulate gene expression. Here, we investigated the influence of this binding
mechanism on the noise in gene expression. Our results showed that, for
biologically relevant parameters, the binding process can be represented by a
two-state Markov model and that the accelerated target finding due to
facilitated diffusion leads to a reduction in both the mRNA and the protein
noise.
