Thermodynamics of statistical inference by cells
Biological Physics
2014-10-08 v3 Statistical Mechanics
Cell Behavior
Molecular Networks
Applications
Abstract
The deep connection between thermodynamics, computation, and information is now well established both theoretically and experimentally. Here, we extend these ideas to show that thermodynamics also places fundamental constraints on statistical estimation and learning. To do so, we investigate the constraints placed by (nonequilibrium) thermodynamics on the ability of biochemical signaling networks within cells to estimate the concentration of an external signal. We show that accuracy is limited by energy consumption, suggesting that there are fundamental thermodynamic constraints on statistical inference.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1405.4001,
title = {Thermodynamics of statistical inference by cells},
author = {Alex H. Lang and Charles K. Fisher and Thierry Mora and Pankaj Mehta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.4001},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
15 pages, 5 figures. V2 includes edits and 2 new figures. V3 is updated to version published in Phys. Rev. Lett