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

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…

Trafficking of AMPA receptors in and out of synapses is crucial for synaptic plasticity. Previous studies have focused on the role of endo/exocytosis processes or that of lateral diffusion of extra-synaptic receptors. We have now directly…

Cells need to reliably sense external ligand concentrations to achieve various biological functions such as chemotaxis or signaling. The molecular recognition of ligands by surface receptors is degenerate in many systems leading to…

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…

How cells reliably infer information about their environment is a fundamentally important question. While sensing and signaling generally start with cell-surface receptors, the degree of accuracy with which a cell can measure external…

Cells adapt to changing environments by sensing ligand concentrations using specific receptors. The accuracy of sensing is ultimately limited by the finite number of ligand molecules bound by receptors. Previously derived physical limits to…

Glutamate and glycine are important neurotransmitters in the brain. An action potential prop- agating in the terminal of a presynatic neuron causes the release of glutamate and glycine in the synapse by vesicles fusing with the cell…

A diffusion-based molecular communication system has two major components: the diffusion in the medium, and the ligand-reception. Information bits, encoded in the time variations of the concentration of molecules, are conveyed to the…

Cells use surface receptors to estimate the concentration of external ligands. Limits on the accuracy of such estimations have been well studied for pairs of ligand and receptor species. However, the environment typically contains many…

The adhesion of cells is mediated by membrane receptors that bind to complementary ligands in apposing cell membranes. It is generally assumed that the lateral diffusion of mobile receptor-ligand bonds in membrane-membrane adhesion zones is…

To adapt their behaviour in changing environments, cells sense concentrations by binding external ligands to their receptors. However, incorrect ligands may bind nonspecifically to receptors, and when their concentration is large, this…

Metastatic cancer cells detect the direction of lymphatic flow by self-communication: they secrete and detect a chemical which, due to the flow, returns to the cell surface anisotropically. The secretion rate is low, meaning detection noise…

In biological cells and novel diagnostic devices biochemical receptors need to be sensitive to extremely small concentration changes of signaling molecules. The accuracy of such molecular signaling is ultimately limited by the counting…

Biological cells are able to accurately sense chemicals with receptors at their surfaces, allowing cells to move towards sources of attractant and away from sources of repellent. The accuracy of sensing chemical concentration is ultimately…

Cells measure concentrations of external ligands by capturing ligand molecules with cell surface receptors. The numbers of molecules captured by different receptors co-vary because they depend on the same extrinsic ligand fluctuations.…

Chemotactic cells of eukaryotic organisms are able to accurately sense shallow chemical concentration gradients using cell-surface receptors. This sensing ability is remarkable as cells must be able to spatially resolve small fractional…

In recent years experiments have demonstrated that living cells can measure low chemical concentrations with high precision, and much progress has been made in understanding what sets the fundamental limit to the precision of chemical…

Membrane receptors for neuromodulators (NM) are highly regulated in their distribution and efficacy - a phenomenon which influences the individual cell's response to central signals of NM release. Even though NM receptor regulation is…

Cells respond to chemical cues, and the precision with which they can sense these cues is fundamentally limited by the stochastic nature of diffusion and ligand binding. Berg and Purcell famously investigated how well a small sensor in an…

Eukaryotic cells generally sense chemical gradients using the binding of chemical ligands to membrane receptors. In order to perform chemotaxis effectively in different environments, cells need to adapt to different concentrations. We…