Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 248102 (2013) [5 pages]

Chemical Sensing by Nonequilibrium Cooperative Receptors

Abstract

References

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Monica Skoge¹, Sahin Naqvi^2,*, Yigal Meir³, and Ned S. Wingreen^2,†
¹Department of Biology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0319, USA
²Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
³Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel

Received 16 December 2012; published 11 June 2013

Cooperativity arising from local interactions in equilibrium receptor systems provides gain, but does not increase sensory performance, as measured by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to a fundamental tradeoff between gain and intrinsic noise. Here we allow sensing to be a nonequilibrium process and show that energy dissipation cannot circumvent the fundamental tradeoff, so that the SNR is still optimal for independent receptors. For systems requiring high gain, nonequilibrium 2D-coupled receptors maximize the SNR, revealing a new design principle for biological sensors.

URL:

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.248102

DOI:

10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.248102

PACS:

87.16.Xa, 87.18.Tt, 87.18.Vf

^*Present address: Department of Biology, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

^†Corresponding author.

wingreen@princeton.edu

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