Related papers: Gradient sensing limit of a cell when controlling …
Accurate gradient sensing is crucial for efficient chemotaxis in noisy environments, but the relationship between cell shape deformations and sensing accuracy is not well understood. Using a theoretical framework based on maximum likelihood…
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…
Eukaryotic cells generally sense chemical gradients using the binding of chemical ligands to membrane receptors. In order to perform chemotaxis effectively in different environments, cells need to adapt to different concentrations. We…
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…
Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…
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…
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…
Bayesian chemotaxis is an information-based target search problem inspired by biological chemotaxis. It is defined by a decision strategy coupled to the dynamic estimation of target position from detections of signaling molecules. We extend…
Eukaryotic cells respond to a chemoattractant gradient by forming intracellular gradients of signaling molecules that reflect the extracellular chemical gradient - an ability called directional sensing. Quantitative experiments have…
Directed cell motion in response to an external chemical gradient occurs in many biological phenomena such as wound healing, angiogenesis, and cancer metastasis. Chemotaxis is often characterized by the accuracy, persistence, and speed of…
This work reports on two results. At first we revisit the Berg and Purcell calculation that provides a lower bound to the error in concentration measurement by cells, by considering the realistic case when the cell starts measuring the…
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…
Most sensory cells use cross-membrane chemoreceptors to detect chemical signals in the environment. The biochemical properties and spatial organization of chemoreceptors play important roles in achieving and maintaining sensitivity and…
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…
Eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients in a wide range of environments. We show that, if a cell is exposed to a highly variable environment, it may gain chemotactic accuracy by expressing multiple receptor types with varying…
In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…
Gradient sensing underlies important biological processes including morphogenesis, polarization, and cell migration. The precision of gradient sensing increases with the length of a detector (a cell or group of cells) in the gradient…
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…
Experimental evidence lends support to the conjecture that the ability of chains of cells to sense the gradient of an external chemical concentration could rely on cell-to-cell communication. This is the basis for the gradient sensing…
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…