Related papers: Theory for the optimal detection of time-varying s…

To successfully navigate chemical gradients, microorganisms need to predict how the ligand concentration changes in space. Due to their limited size, they do not take a spatial derivative over their body length but rather a temporal…

Cells are often considered input-output devices that maximize the transmission of information by converting extracellular stimuli (input) via signaling pathways (communication channel) to cell behavior (output). However, in biological…

Cells use temporal dynamical patterns to transmit information via signaling pathways. As optimality with respect to the environment plays a fundamental role in biological systems, organisms have evolved optimal ways to transmit information.…

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…

Living cells deploy many resources to sense their environments, including receptors, downstream signaling molecules, time and fuel. However, it is not known which resources fundamentally limit the precision of sensing, like weak links in a…

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…

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…

One major challenge for living cells is the measurement and prediction of signals corrupted by noise. In general, cells need to make decisions based on their compressed representation of noisy, time-varying signals. Strategies for signal…

Living cells can leverage correlations in environmental fluctuations to predict the future environment and mount a response ahead of time. To this end, cells need to encode the past signal into the output of the intracellular network from…

Despite being optimized, the information processing of biological organisms exhibits significant variability in its complexity and capability. One potential source of this diversity is the limitation of resources required for information…

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…

Adaptation of the chemotaxis sensory pathway of the bacterium Escherichia coli is integral for detecting chemicals over a wide range of background concentrations, ultimately allowing cells to swim towards sources of attractant and away from…

Cells must continuously sense and respond to time-varying environmental stimuli. These signals are transmitted and processed by biochemical signalling networks. However, the biochemical reactions making up these networks are intrinsically…

Cells often have tens of thousands of receptors, even though only a few activated receptors can trigger full cellular responses. Reasons for the overabundance of receptors remain unclear. We suggest that, in certain conditions, the large…

Tasks that require information about the world imply a trade-off between the time spent on observation and the variance of the response. In particular, fast decisions need to rely on uncertain information. However, standard estimates of…

Cells in natural environments like tissue or soil sense and respond to extracellular ligands with intricately structured and non-monotonic spatial distributions that are sculpted by processes such as fluid flow and substrate adhesion.…

Living cells can enhance their fitness by anticipating environmental change. We study how accurately linear signaling networks in cells can predict future signals. We find that maximal predictive power results from a combination of…

A recurrent idea in the study of complex systems is that optimal information processing is to be found near bifurcation points or phase transitions. However, this heuristic hypothesis has few (if any) concrete realizations where a standard…

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…

Signaling in enzymatic networks is typically triggered by environmental fluctuations, resulting in a series of stochastic chemical reactions, leading to corruption of the signal by noise. For example, information flow is initiated by…