Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 33: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems IV (joint with DY)

BP 33.4: Talk

Friday, March 15, 2013, 10:15–10:30, H44

Information-theoretic vs. thermodynamic entropy production in autonomous sensory networks — •Andre Cardoso Barato and Udo Seifert — Universität Stuttgart, II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Pfaffenwaldring 57 / III, D-70550, Stuttgart, Deutschland

Acquiring and processing information about the instantaneous state of the environment is a prerequisite for survival for any living system. Sensory and signal transducting networks have evolved to achieve this task under a variety of external conditions as, e.g., the work on bacteria like Escherichia coli has demonstrated so beautifully [1,2].

We determine the rate with which sensory networks acquire information about the changing external conditions. Comparing this rate with the thermodynamic entropy production that quantifies the cost of maintaining the network, we show that there is no universal bound restricting the rate of obtaining information to be less than this thermodynamic cost. These results obtained within a general bipartite model consisting of a stochastically changing environment that affects the instantaneous transition rates within the system are illustrated with a simple four-states model motivated by cellular sensing. On the technical level, we require and justify a new conjecture on the mutual information rate involving a non-Markovian process.

[1] H. C. Berg and M. Purcell, Biophys. J. 20, 193 (1977).

[2] G. Lan, P. Sartori, S. Neumann, V. Sourjik, and Y. Tu, Nature Phys. 8, 422 (2012).