Related papers: Multicellular sensing at a feedback-induced critic…
A ubiquitous way that cells share information is by exchanging molecules. Yet, the fundamental ways that this information exchange is influenced by intracellular dynamics remain unclear. Here we use information theory to investigate a…
Collective cell responses to exogenous cues depend on cell-cell interactions. In principle, these can result in enhanced sensitivity to weak and noisy stimuli. However, this has not yet been shown experimentally, and, little is known about…
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…
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…
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…
Intracellular biochemical networks fluctuate dynamically due to various internal and external sources of fluctuation. Dissecting the fluctuation into biologically relevant components is important for understanding how a cell controls and…
Cells receive signaling molecules by receptors and relay information via sensory networks so that they can respond properly depending on the type of signal. Recent studies have shown that cells can extract multi-dimensional information from…
Cell differentiation is an important process in living organisms. Differentiation is mostly based on binary decisions with the progenitor cells choosing between two specific lineages. The differentiation dynamics have both deterministic and…
Single-cell studies often show significant phenotypic variability due to the stochastic nature of intra-cellular biochemical reactions. When the numbers of molecules, e.g., transcription factors and regulatory enzymes, are in low abundance,…
Multiple interlinked positive feedback loops shape the stimulus responses of various biochemical systems, such as the cell cycle or intracellular calcium release. Recent studies with simplified models have identified two advantages of…
Cells sense environmental signals and transmit information intracellularly through changes in the abundance of molecular components. Such molecular abundances can be measured in single cells and exhibit significant heterogeneity in clonal…
Many cellular components are present in such low numbers that individual stochastic production and degradation events lead to significant fluctuations in molecular abundances. Although feedback control can, in principle, suppress such…
How do single cell fate decisions induced by activation of key signaling proteins above threshold concentrations within a time interval are affected by stochastic fluctuations in biochemical reactions? We address this question using minimal…
Living cells are continually exposed to environmental signals that vary in time. These signals are detected and processed by biochemical networks, which are often highly stochastic. To understand how cells cope with a fluctuating…
Signal transduction in biological cells is effected by signaling pathways that typically include multiple feedback loops. Here we analyze information transfer through a prototypical signaling module with biochemical feedback. The module…
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…
Various biological phenomena, like cell differentiation and pattern formation in multicellular organisms, are explained using the bifurcation theory. Molecular network motifs like positive feedback and mutual repressor exhibit bifurcation…
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…
Inter and intra-cellular signaling are essential for individual cells to execute various physiological tasks and accurately respond to changes in their environment. Signaling is carried out via diffusible molecules, the transport of which…
Many biological, physical, and social interactions have a particular dependence on where they take place. In living cells, protein movement between the nucleus and cytoplasm affects cellular response (i.e., proteins must be present in the…