Energetic analysis of cost of transcription and translation for each of the models.

The cost of protein synthesis for each model taking account the number of mRNA molecules produced during one cell cycle and translation to replace half of the total KorA and KorB protein pool during a cell cycle. The cost is calculated in terms of phosphate groups from ATP. In the unregulated model, he transcription cost is more than 5-fold greater than the translation cost. This reduces to less than 7% of the translation cost in the fully cooperative model. Thus the overall benefit of the cooperative regulation is a greater than 10-fold reduction in cost to the host of producing the same quantity of protein.