Related papers: Limitations on concentration measurements and grad…
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…
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…
Berg and Purcell [Biophys. J. 20, 193 (1977)] calculated how the accuracy of concentration sensing by single-celled organisms is limited by noise from the small number of counted molecules. Here we generalize their results to the sensing of…
Cells respond to chemical cues, and the precision with which they can sense these cues is fundamentally limited by the stochastic nature of diffusion and ligand binding. Berg and Purcell famously investigated how well a small sensor in an…
Living cells often need to extract information from biochemical signals that are noisy. We study how accurately cells can measure chemical concentrations with signaling networks that are linear. For stationary signals of long duration, they…
Eukaryotic cells perform chemotaxis by determining the direction of chemical gradients based on stochastic sensing of concentrations at the cell surface. To examine the efficiency of this process, previous studies have investigated the…
To adapt their behaviour in changing environments, cells sense concentrations by binding external ligands to their receptors. However, incorrect ligands may bind nonspecifically to receptors, and when their concentration is large, this…
Microorganisms like bacteria can sense concentration of chemo-attractants in its medium very accurately. They achieve this through interaction between the receptors on their cell surface and the chemo-attractant molecules (like sugar). But…
Chemotactic cells of eukaryotic organisms are able to accurately sense shallow chemical concentration gradients using cell-surface receptors. This sensing ability is remarkable as cells must be able to spatially resolve small fractional…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients by directly measuring spatial concentration differences. The precision of such gradient sensing is limited by fluctuations in the binding of diffusing particles to specific…
Many types of cells are able to accurately sense shallow gradients of chemicals across their diameters, allowing the cells to move towards or away from chemical sources. This chemotactic ability relies on the remarkable capacity of cells to…
Biological cells estimate concentration gradients of signaling molecules with a precision that is limited not only by sensing noise, but additionally by the cell's own stochastic motion. We ask for the theoretical limits of gradient…
When a single cell senses a chemical gradient and chemotaxes, stochastic receptor-ligand binding can be a fundamental limit to the cell's accuracy. For clusters of cells responding to gradients, however, there is a critical difference: even…
How cells reliably infer information about their environment is a fundamentally important question. While sensing and signaling generally start with cell-surface receptors, the degree of accuracy with which a cell can measure external…
Gradient sensing requires at least two measurements at different points in space. These measurements must then be communicated to a common location to be compared, which is unavoidably noisy. While much is known about the limits of…
Cells rely on the ability to sense and respond to small spatial differences in chemoattractant concentrations for survival. There is growing evidence that this is accomplished by setting the signaling system near the threshold for…
Position determination in biological systems is often achieved through protein concentration gradients. Measuring the local concentration of such a protein with a spatially-varying distribution allows the measurement of position within the…
Accurate sensing of chemical concentrations is essential for numerous biological processes. The accuracy of this sensing, for small numbers of molecules, is limited by shot noise. Corresponding theoretical limits on sensing precision, as a…
Biological sensory systems generally operate out of equilibrium, which often leads to their improved performance. Here, we study the sensitivity of ligand concentration for a general receptor model, which is generally in the non-equilibrium…
We combine stochastic thermodynamics, large deviation theory, and information theory to derive fundamental limits on the accuracy with which single cell receptors can estimate external concentrations. As expected, if estimation is performed…