Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Directional chemosensing is ubiquitous in cell biology, but some cells such as mating yeast paradoxically degrade the signal they aim to detect. While the data processing inequality suggests that such signal modification cannot increase the sensory information, we show using a reaction-diffusion model and an exactly solvable discrete-state reduction that it can. We identify a non-Markovian step in the information chain allowing the system to evade the data processing inequality, reflecting the nonlocal nature of diffusion. Our results apply to any sensory system in which degradation couples to diffusion. Experimental data suggest that mating yeast operate in the beneficial regime where degradation improves sensing.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Institutions: University of Pittsburgh, University of Illinois Chicago
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
Awards: Tracking shallow and dynamic chemoattractant gradients - how yeast cells amplify both internal and external signals to locate mating partners, RCN: Finding Your Inner Modeler - an interdisciplinary community solving problems in systems biology, CAREER: Building a Theory of Collective Cellular Sensing with Applications to Morphogenesis, Chemotaxis, and Metastasis
OpenAlex ID: W4402901791