Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 248102 (2013) [5 pages]Chemical Sensing by Nonequilibrium Cooperative ReceptorsReceived 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. © 2013 American Physical Society 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
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