Abstract
The reliable detection of environmental molecules in the presence of noise is an important cellular function, yet the underlying computational mechanisms are not well understood. We introduce a model of two interacting sensors which allows for the principled exploration of signal statistics, cooperation strategies and the role of energy consumption in optimal sensing, quantified through the mutual information between the signal and the sensors. Here we report that in general the optimal sensing strategy depends both on the noise level and the statistics of the signals. For joint, correlated signals, energy consuming (nonequilibrium), asymmetric couplings result in maximum information gain in the low-noise, high-signal-correlation limit. Surprisingly we also find that energy consumption is not always required for optimal sensing. We generalise our model to incorporate time integration of the sensor state by a population of readout molecules, and demonstrate that sensor interaction and energy consumption remain important for optimal sensing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 975 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-8 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 20 Feb 2020 |
Funding
We are grateful to Gašper Tkačik and Pieter Rein ten Wolde for useful comments and a critical reading of the manuscript. V.N. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under Grants DMR-1508730 and PHY-1734332, and the Northwestern- Fermilab Center for Applied Physics and Superconducting Technologies. G.J.S. acknowledges research funds from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and OIST Graduate University. D.J.S. was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Center for the Physics of Biological Function (PHY-1734030) and by a Simons Foundation fellowship for the MMLS. This work was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number R01EB026943 (V.N. and D.J.S.).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| MMLS | |
| National Science Foundation | DMR-1508730, PHY-1734332 |
| National Institutes of Health | |
| National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering | R01EB026943 |
| Simons Foundation | |
| Fermilab | |
| Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology School Corporation | |
| Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | |
| Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University | PHY-1734030 |
