Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems 1 (joint session BP/DY)

BP 6.7: Talk

Monday, September 5, 2022, 17:00–17:15, H16

Quantification of intracellular information flow — •Mirna Kramar¹, Mathieu Coppey¹, Thierry Mora², and Aleksandra Walczak² — ¹UMR 168, Institut Curie, Paris — ²Laboratoire de Physique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris

Signalling pathways are cascades of biochemical reactions which transduce signals from the exterior to the interior of the cell. By essence, these pathways convey information about the outside world which cells collect and process to adapt and guide decisions. The cell’s ability to govern its functions correctly and precisely while relying on these intricate biochemical networks is surprising given the crowded and noisy cell interior, which indicates that the mechanisms cells use to process information are highly sophisticated. While our understanding of the constituents of the cellular machinery and the processes taking place in the cell is steadily increasing, little is known about the information flow within the cell. Are pathways conveying only on/off signals, or is there more graded information being transduced?

Here, we measure and quantify the information relayed through the MAPK signalling pathway, one of the key signalling pathways in eukaryotic systems. Using a synergy of an optogenetic experimental setup and a data analysis pipeline based on information theory, we quantify the input-output relationships within the MAPK signalling pathway. We show that the capacity of the pathway far exceeds the 1-bit value (on/off), and that collective systems of cell seem to exploit this capacity.