Related papers: Biological signaling by interfacial sound pulses. …
Currently, biological signaling is envisaged as a combination of activation and movement, triggered by local molecular interactions and molecular diffusion, respectively. However, we here suggest, that other fundamental physical mechanisms…
Local changes in pH are known to significantly alter the state and activity of proteins and in particular enzymes. pH variations induced by pulses propagating along soft interfaces (e.g. the lipid bilayer) would therefore constitute an…
Electrical signals play the primary role in rapid communication among organs, tissues and cells in biosystems. We have analyzed and discussed three phenomena of electrical communication in biosystems, including direction-changing movement…
Biological membranes by virtue of their elastic properties should be capable of propagating localized perturbations analogous to sound waves. However, the existence and the possible role of such waves in communication in biology remains…
The existence and propagation of acoustic pressure pulses on lipid monolayers at the air/water-interfaces are directly observed by simple mechanical detection. The pulses are excited by small amounts of solvents added to the monolayer from…
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…
This paper presents a method for shaping the transmit pulse of a molecular signal such that the diffusion channel's response is a sharp pulse. The impulse response of a diffusion channel is typically characterised as having an infinitely…
Molecular communication is a biologically-inspired method of communication with attractive properties for microscale and nanoscale devices. In molecular communication, messages are transmitted by releasing a pattern of molecules at a…
Intercellular signaling has an important role in organism development, but not all communication occurs using the same mechanism. Here, we analyze the energy efficiency of intercellular signaling by two canonical mechanisms: diffusion of…
Mounting evidence shows that oscillatory activity is widespread in cell signaling. Here we review some of this recent evidence, focusing on both the molecular mechanisms that potentially underlie such dynamical behavior, and the potential…
In this paper we show that living cells can multiplex biochemical signals, i.e. transmit multiple signals through the same signaling pathway simultaneously, and yet respond to them very specifically. We demonstrate how two binary input…
Information transmission in biological signaling circuits has often been described using the metaphor of a noise filter. Cellular systems need accurate, real-time data about their environmental conditions, but the biochemical reaction…
In recent years it is increasingly being recognized that biochemical signals are not necessarily constant in time and that the temporal dynamics of a signal can be the information carrier. Moreover, it is now well established that…
Statistical properties of environments experienced by biological signaling systems in the real world change, which necessitate adaptive responses to achieve high fidelity information transmission. One form of such adaptive response is gain…
Arterial blood pressure is a key vital sign for the health of the human body. As such, accurate and reproducible measurement techniques are necessary for successful diagnosis. Blood pressure measurement is an example of molecular…
Signal transduction, or signal-processing capability, is a fundamental property of nature that manifests universally across systems of different scales -- from quantum behaviour to the biological. This includes the detection of…
In this paper, we propose adding enzymes to the propagation environment of a diffusive molecular communication system as a strategy for mitigating intersymbol interference. The enzymes form reaction intermediates with information molecules…
Models that invoke nonlinear wavefront propagation in a chemically excitable medium are rife in the biological literature. Indeed, the idea that wavefront propagation can serve as a signaling mechanism has often been invoked to explain…
Molecular signalling in living cells occurs at low copy numbers and is thereby inherently limited by the noise imposed by thermal diffusion. The precision at which biochemical receptors can count signalling molecules is intimately related…
The action potential propagating in a nerve fibre generates accompanying mechanical and thermal effects. The whole signal is therefore an ensemble which includes primary and secondary components. The primary components of a signal are the…