Berlin 2012 – wissenschaftliches Programm
Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 20: Regulation
BP 20.1: Hauptvortrag
Donnerstag, 29. März 2012, 09:30–10:00, H 1058
Precision of sensing, memory, and fluctuating environments — •Robert Endres1,2 and Gerardo Aquino1,2 — 1Division of Molecular Biosciences, Imperial College, London, UK — 2Centre for Integrative Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, Imperial College, London, UK
Biological cells are known to sense their chemical environment with astonishing accuracy, crucial for nutrient scavenging, mating, immune response, and development. It is unknown if this sensing near the single-molecule detection limit is due to highly precise single measurements or due to learning over time. In this work, we analyze if cell memory can allow cells to sense beyond current estimates of the fundamental physical limit. By merging Bayesian inference with information theory, we derive analytical formulas which show that memory helps for sensing of correlated fluctuating environments, but not for sensing of strongly uncorrelated fluctuating environments. Despite many analogies with problem-solving strategies in engineering, our theory shows fundamental differences in interpreting noisy stimuli in the microscopic and macroscopic world.