Physics – Biological Physics
Scientific paper
2011-01-13
Phys. Rev. E 83, 021914, (2011)
Physics
Biological Physics
15 pages, 12 figures,accepted for publication on Physical Review E
Scientific paper
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 sensing in general. While amplification of weak stimuli is useful in absence of noise, its usefulness is less clear in presence of extrinsic input noise and intrinsic signaling noise. Here, exemplified on bacterial chemotaxis, we combine the allosteric Monod-Wyman- Changeux model for signal amplification by receptor complexes with calculations of noise to study their interconnectedness. Importantly, we calculate the signal-to-noise ratio, describing the balance of beneficial and detrimental effects of clustering for the cell. Interestingly, we find that there is no advantage for the cell to build receptor complexes for noisy input stimuli in absence of intrinsic signaling noise. However, with intrinsic noise, an optimal complex size arises in line with estimates of the sizes of chemoreceptor complexes in bacteria and protein aggregates in lipid rafts of eukaryotic cells.
Aquino Gerardo
Clausznitzer Diana
Endres Robert G.
Tollis Sylvain
No associations
LandOfFree
Optimal receptor-cluster size determined by intrinsic and extrinsic noise does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Optimal receptor-cluster size determined by intrinsic and extrinsic noise, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Optimal receptor-cluster size determined by intrinsic and extrinsic noise will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-66677