Related papers: Increased accuracy of ligand sensing by receptor i…

To perform recognition, molecules must locate and specifically bind their targets within a noisy biochemical environment with many look-alikes. Molecular recognition processes, especially the induced-fit mechanism, are known to involve…

Intracellular structural alterations are hallmark of several disease conditions and treatment modalities. However, robust methods to quantify these changes are scarce. In view of this, we introduce a new method to quantify structural…

Berg and Purcell [Biophys. J. 20, 193 (1977)] calculated how the accuracy of concentration sensing by single-celled organisms is limited by noise from the small number of counted molecules. Here we generalize their results to the sensing of…

The adhesion of biological membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. Central questions are how the binding kinetics of these proteins is affected by the membranes and by the membrane anchoring…

Cells often have tens of thousands of receptors, even though only a few activated receptors can trigger full cellular responses. Reasons for the overabundance of receptors remain unclear. We suggest that, in certain conditions, the large…

Eukaryotic cells perform chemotaxis by determining the direction of chemical gradients based on stochastic sensing of concentrations at the cell surface. To examine the efficiency of this process, previous studies have investigated the…

Biological cells, by definition, are the basic units which contain the fundamental molecules of life of which all living things are composed. Understanding how they function and differentiating cells from one another therefore is of…

Trafficking of glutamate receptors into and out of synapses is critically involved in the plasticity of excitatory synaptic transmission. Endocytosis and exocytosis of receptors have initially been thought to account alone for this…

Information of relevance to the organism often is represented by the concentrations of particular molecules inside a cell. As outside observers we can now measure these concentrations precisely, but the cell's own mechanisms must be…

Experimental evidence lends support to the conjecture that the ability of chains of cells to sense the gradient of an external chemical concentration could rely on cell-to-cell communication. This is the basis for the gradient sensing…

Accurate measurements of kinetic rate constants for interacting biomolecules is crucial for understanding the mechanisms underlying intracellular signalling pathways. The magnitude of binding rates plays a very important molecular…

Cells continuously sense their surroundings to detect modifications and generate responses. Very often changes in extracellular concentrations initiate signaling cascades that eventually result in changes in gene expression. Increasing…

The present study focuses on the receptor driven endocytosis typical of viral entry into a cell. A locally increased density of receptors at the time of contact between the cell and the virus is necessary in this case. The virus is…

Physical limit of molecular sensing has been extensively studied in biological systems. Biosensors are engineered equivalents of molecular sensors in living systems and play critical role in disease diagnosis and management. Investigation…

Ligand-receptor interactions constitute a fundamental mechanism of cell-cell communication and signaling. NicheNet is a well-established computational tool that infers ligand-receptor interactions that potentially regulate gene expression…

Cellular signaling is essential in information processing and decision making. Therefore, a variety of experimental approaches have been developed to study signaling on bulk and single-cell level. Single-cell measurements of signaling…

The detection of entanglement provides a definitive proof of quantumness. Its ascertainment might be challenging for hot or macroscopic objects, where entanglement is typically weak, but nevertheless present. Here we propose a platform for…

Collective cell responses to exogenous cues depend on cell-cell interactions. In principle, these can result in enhanced sensitivity to weak and noisy stimuli. However, this has not yet been shown experimentally, and, little is known about…

The study of a receptor-ligand system generally relies on the analysis of its dose-response (or concentration-effect) curve, which quantifies the relation between ligand concentration and the biological effect (or cellular response) induced…

Constancy of life vitally depends on the internalization of particles through biomembranes. Of particular interest, cellular uptake, including phagocytosis, receptor-mediated endocytosis, and membrane fusion, critically depends on the…