Related papers: Limits of sensing temporal concentration changes b…
Single-molecule tracking is a powerful way to look at the dynamic organization of plasma membranes. However, there are some limitations to its use. For example, it was recently observed, using numerical simulation, that time-averaging…
Living cells sense noisy biochemical signals crucial for survival, yet models incorporating intracellular signaling are limited. This study examines how cells sense chemotactic concentrations through phosphorylation readouts in Ca2+…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients by directly measuring spatial concentration differences. The precision of such gradient sensing is limited by fluctuations in the binding of diffusing particles to specific…
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…
This paper considers a sequential estimation and sensor scheduling problem with one sensor and one estimator. The sensor makes sequential observations about the state of an underlying memoryless stochastic process, and makes a decision as…
Organisms use specialized sensors to measure their environments, but the fundamental principles that determine their accuracy remain largely unknown. In Escherichia coli chemotaxis, we previously found that gradient-climbing speed is…
Microorganisms like bacteria can sense concentration of chemo-attractants in its medium very accurately. They achieve this through interaction between the receptors on their cell surface and the chemo-attractant molecules (like sugar). But…
We investigate single-cell directional sensing from diffusing chemoattractant signals released by a localized source. We focus on the low-concentration regime in which receptor activity is discrete and cellular decisions are made on…
Clinical biosensors with low detection limit hold significant promise in the early diagnosis of debilitating diseases. Recent progress in sensor development has led to the demonstration of detection capable of detecting target molecules…
Position determination in biological systems is often achieved through protein concentration gradients. Measuring the local concentration of such a protein with a spatially-varying distribution allows the measurement of position within the…
Many types of cells can sense external ligand concentrations with cell-surface receptors at extremely high accuracy. Interestingly, ligand-bound receptors are often internalized, a process also known as receptor-mediated endocytosis. While…
Biomolecular condensates form on timescales of seconds in cells upon environmental or compositional changes. Condensate formation is thus argued to act as a mechanism for sensing such changes and quickly initiating downstream processes,…
Here we characterized an information measure for cell polarity that applies to non-motile cells responding to a chemical gradient. The central idea is that polarization represents information about the direction of the gradient. We applied…
Biological cells sense external chemical stimuli in their environment using cell-surface receptors. To increase the sensitivity of sensing, receptors often cluster, most noticeably in bacterial chemotaxis, a paradigm for signaling and…
Quantitatively predictive models of biomolecular circuits are important tools for the design of synthetic biology and molecular communication circuits. The information content of typical time-lapse single-cell data for the inference of…
Cellular behaviors such as migration, division, and differentiation rely on precise timing, and yet the molecular events that govern these behaviors are highly stochastic. We investigate regulatory strategies that decrease the timing noise…
Biological sensory receptors provide excellent examples of microscopic scale information transduction amidst stochastic noise. We argue that stochasticity is not always a hindrance to sensing. Instead, it could allow a single stochastic…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to perform directional mechanosensing by directly measuring minute spatial differences in the mechanical stress on their membranes. Here, we explore the limits of a single mechanosensitive channel activation…
Recent technological advances in cutting-edge ultrasensitive fluorescence microscopy have allowed single-molecule imaging experiments in living cells across all three domains of life to become commonplace. Single-molecule live-cell data is…
Wet-lab experiments, in which the dynamics within living cells are observed, are usually costly and time consuming. This is particularly true if single-cell measurements are obtained using experimental techniques such as flow-cytometry or…