In silico and in vitro protocols for quantifying gene expression noise modulated by microRNAs

Characterizing the noise modulation pattern of microRNA is valuable for both microRNA function analysis and synthetic biology applications. Here we propose a coarse-grained model to simulate how the properties of microRNAs, competing RNAs, and microRNA response elements affect gene expression noise. We also detail an experimental protocol based on synthetic gene circuits and flow cytometry to quantify the noise. This framework is easy-to-use for the study and application of both microRNA and gene expression noise. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Wei et al. (2021).