Related papers: Optimal census by quorum sensing
Collective estimation is a variant of collective decision-making where agents reach consensus on a continuous quantity through social interactions. Achieving precise consensus is complex due to the co-evolution of opinions and the…
Positive feedback regulation is ubiquitous in cell signaling networks, often leading to binary outcomes in response to graded stimuli. However, the role of such feedbacks in clustering, and in spatial spreading of activated molecules, has…
We introduce a feedback control algorithm that increases the speed at which a measurement extracts information about a $d$-dimensional system by a factor that scales as $d^2$. Generalizing this algorithm, we apply it to a register of $n$…
Animals move smoothly and reliably in unpredictable environments. Models of sensorimotor control have assumed that sensory information from the environment leads to actions, which then act back on the environment, creating a single,…
Inside individual cells, expression of genes is stochastic across organisms ranging from bacterial to human cells. A ubiquitous feature of stochastic expression is burst-like synthesis of gene products, which drives considerable…
To explain the stability of cooperation is a central task of evolutionary theory. We investigate this question in the case of quorum sensing (QS) bacteria, which regulate cooperative traits in response to population density. Cooperation is…
Living organisms rely on endogenous feedback mechanisms to maintain homeostasis in the presence of uncertainty and environmental fluctuations. An emerging challenge at the interface of control systems engineering and synthetic biology is…
Programmable quantum hardware provides an emerging platform for exploring and controlling non-unitary quantum dynamics through measurement-based operations. In this work, we introduce feedback-directed circuit architectures that integrate…
Inputs to signaling pathways can have complex statistics that depend on the environment and on the behavioral response to previous stimuli. Such behavioral feedback is particularly important in navigation. Successful navigation relies on…
We propose a technique to improve the probability of single-photon emission with an electrically pumped quantum dot in an optical microcavity, by continuously monitoring the energy state of the dot and using feedback to control when to stop…
A cell routinely responds to one of many competing environmental cues. A fundamental question is whether the cell follows the cue prioritized by its internal signaling network or the cue that carries the most external information. We…
Cellular decision-making based on information received from the external environment is frequently initiated by transmembrane receptors. These receptors are known to propagate such information by triggering a series of irreversible,…
Living cells must control the reading out or "expression" of information encoded in their genomes, and this regulation often is mediated by transcription factors--proteins that bind to DNA and either enhance or repress the expression of…
We typically think of cells as responding to external signals independently by regulating their gene expression levels, yet they often locally exchange information and coordinate. Can such spatial coupling be of benefit for conveying…
Bacterial second messengers are crucial for transmitting environmental information to cellular responses. However, quantifying their information transmission capacity remains challenging. Here, we engineer an isolated cAMP signaling channel…
A single gene, regulating its own expression via a positive feedback loop, constitutes a common motif in gene regulatory networks and signalling cascades. Recent experiments on the development of competence in the bacterial population…
A model for autonomous feedback control of particle transport through a large number of channels is introduced. Interactions among the particles can lead to a strong suppression of fluctuations in the particle number statistics. Within a…
Mutual information is a theoretically grounded metric for quantifying cellular signaling pathways. However, its measurement demands characterization of both input and output distributions, limiting practical applications. Here, we present…
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…
We quantify the influence of the topology of a transcriptional regulatory network on its ability to process environmental signals. By posing the problem in terms of information theory, we may do this without specifying the function…