Precision of protein thermometry
Biological Physics
2021-09-01 v2 Molecular Networks
Abstract
Temperature sensing is a ubiquitous cell behavior, but the fundamental limits to the precision of temperature sensing are poorly understood. Unlike in chemical concentration sensing, the precision of temperature sensing is not limited by extrinsic fluctuations in the temperature field itself. Instead, we find that precision is limited by the intrinsic copy number, turnover, and binding kinetics of temperature-sensitive proteins. Developing a model based on the canonical TlpA protein, we find that a cell can estimate temperature to within 2%. We compare this prediction with in vivo data on temperature sensing in bacteria.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2012.02918,
title = {Precision of protein thermometry},
author = {Michael Vennettilli and Soutick Saha and Ushasi Roy and Andrew Mugler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.02918},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
22 pages, 7 figures