with the LNA is always equal to the mean calculated with the deterministic approximation because the mean is not coupled to the variance. When 3 moments are included, the system shows damped oscillations, although not as damped as the SSA trajectories. By including more moments the trajectories converge to the SSA trajectories. When 6 moments are taken into account, the trajectories calculated with the moment approximation show a similar behaviour to the trajectories calculated with the SSA. This is confirmed by the cumulative difference between the SSA trajectories and the trajectories calculated with the moment approximation shown in Figures \[p53figure1\]i-j, which show a clear decrease in cumulative error for all variables when 6 central moments compared to 2 central moments are included in the approximation. Including more moments would improve the estimation further.

We analyze the distribution of the p53 model over the time course by looking at the central moments (Figure \[p53figure2\]). The variance for the SSA is first increasing, then after about 20 hours it levels off. In Figure \[p53figure2\]b we compare the variance calculated based on the SSA with the LNA and moment approximation method. When up to five central moments are included, the variance keeps increasing 