Abstract
Gene expression can be surprisingly dynamic and heterogeneous. This variability in gene expression, even in a clonal population of cells grown under the same condition, has been observed in diverse organisms, from mammalian stem cells to bacteria. It remains unclear how this variability is generated and what function it can serve. By using a combination of single cell time-lapse microscopy, mathematical modelling and synthetic biology techniques we are attempting to understand how gene circuits generate dynamic gene expression, and how this dynamic information is transferred to downstream processes and other pathways.