Construction of an Effective Landscape for Multistate Genetic Switches

Multistate genetic switches play a crucial role during embryonic development and tumorigenesis. An archetypical example is the three-way switch regulating epithelial-hybrid-mesenchymal transitions. We devise a special WKB-based approach to investigate white Gaussian and shot noise effects on three-way switches, and construct an effective landscape in good quantitative agreement with stochastic simulations. This approach allows efficient analytical or numerical calculation of the landscape contours, the optimal path, and the state relative stability for general multicomponent multistate switches.