Related papers: Optimal receptor-cluster size determined by intrin…
Cooperative interactions among sensory receptors provide a general mechanism to increase the sensitivity of signal transduction. In particular, bacterial chemotaxis receptors interact cooperatively to produce an ultrasensitive response to…
Bacterial chemotaxis is controlled by the signalling of a cluster of receptors. A cooperative model is presented, in which coupling between neighbouring receptor dimers enhances the sensitivity with which stimuli can be detected, without…
In many sensory systems, transmembrane receptors are spatially organized in large clusters. Such arrangement may facilitate signal amplification and the integration of multiple stimuli. However, this organization likely also affects the…
Receptors of bacterial chemotaxis form clusters at the cell poles, where clusters act as "antennas" to amplify small changes in ligand concentration. Interestingly, chemoreceptors cluster at multiple length scales. At the smallest scale,…
Collective cell migration in response to a chemical cue occurs in many biological processes such as morphogenesis and cancer metastasis. Clusters of migratory cells in these systems are capable of responding to gradients of less than 1%…
Spatial information from cell-surface receptors is crucial for processes that require signal processing and sensing of the environment. Here, we investigate the optimal placement of such receptors through a theoretical model that minimizes…
Bacterial chemotactic sensing converts noisy chemical signals into running and tumbling. We analyze the static sensing limits of mixed Tar/Tsr chemoreceptor clusters in individual Escherichia coli cells using a heterogeneous…
Understanding cell function requires an accurate description of how noise is transmitted through biochemical networks. We present an analytical result for the power spectrum of the output signal of a biochemical network that takes into…
When cells measure concentrations of chemical signals, they may average multiple measurements over time in order to reduce noise in their measurements. However, when cells are in a environment that changes over time, past measurements may…
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…
Most sensory cells use surface receptors to detect environmental stimuli and initiate downstream signaling. Cooperative interactions among sensory receptors is known to play a crucial role in enhancing the sensitivity of biochemical…
We show how the competition between sensing and adaptation can result in a performance peak in E.coli chemotaxis using extensive numerical simulations in a detailed theoretical model. Receptor clustering amplifies the input signal coming…
Eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients in a wide range of environments. We show that, if a cell is exposed to a highly variable environment, it may gain chemotactic accuracy by expressing multiple receptor types with varying…
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…
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…
Many membrane-bound molecules in cells form small clusters. It has been hypothesized that these clusters convert an analog extracellular signal into a digital intracellular signal and that this conversion increases signaling fidelity.…
The reliable detection of environmental molecules in the presence of noise is an important cellular function, yet the underlying computational mechanisms are not well understood. We introduce a model of two interacting sensors which allows…
Gene regulatory circuits must contend with intrinsic noise that arises due to finite numbers of proteins. While some circuits act to reduce this noise, others appear to exploit it. A striking example is the competence circuit in Bacillus…
Living cells maintain size homeostasis by actively compensating for size fluctuations. Here, we present two stochastic maps that unify phenomenological models by integrating fluctuating single-cell growth rates and size-dependent noise…
Living cells presumably employ optimized information transfer methods, enabling efficient communication even in noisy environments. As expected, the efficiency of chemical communications between cells depends on the properties of the…