Predicting concentration changes via discrete sampling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tjalma, Age J., Wolde, Pieter Rein ten
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Tjalma, Age J.
Wolde, Pieter Rein ten
author_facet Tjalma, Age J.
Wolde, Pieter Rein ten
contents To successfully navigate chemical gradients, microorganisms need to predict how the ligand concentration changes in space. Due to their limited size, they do not take a spatial derivative over their body length but rather a temporal derivative, comparing the current signal with that in the recent past, over the so-called adaptation time. This strategy is pervasive in biology, but it remains unclear what determines the accuracy of such measurements. Using a generalized version of the previously established sampling framework, we investigate how resource limitations and the statistics of the input signal set the optimal design of a well-characterized network that measures temporal concentration changes: the Escherichia coli chemotaxis network. Our results show how an optimal adaptation time arises from the trade-off between the sampling error, caused by the stochastic nature of the network, and the dynamical error, caused by uninformative fluctuations in the input. A larger resource availability reduces the sampling error, which allows for a smaller adaptation time, thereby simultaneously decreasing the dynamical error. Similarly, we find that the optimal adaptation time scales inversely with the gradient steepness, because steeper gradients lift the signal above the noise and reduce the sampling error. These findings shed light on the principles that govern the optimal design of the E. coli chemotaxis network specifically, and any system measuring temporal changes more broadly.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_05825
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Predicting concentration changes via discrete sampling
Tjalma, Age J.
Wolde, Pieter Rein ten
Molecular Networks
To successfully navigate chemical gradients, microorganisms need to predict how the ligand concentration changes in space. Due to their limited size, they do not take a spatial derivative over their body length but rather a temporal derivative, comparing the current signal with that in the recent past, over the so-called adaptation time. This strategy is pervasive in biology, but it remains unclear what determines the accuracy of such measurements. Using a generalized version of the previously established sampling framework, we investigate how resource limitations and the statistics of the input signal set the optimal design of a well-characterized network that measures temporal concentration changes: the Escherichia coli chemotaxis network. Our results show how an optimal adaptation time arises from the trade-off between the sampling error, caused by the stochastic nature of the network, and the dynamical error, caused by uninformative fluctuations in the input. A larger resource availability reduces the sampling error, which allows for a smaller adaptation time, thereby simultaneously decreasing the dynamical error. Similarly, we find that the optimal adaptation time scales inversely with the gradient steepness, because steeper gradients lift the signal above the noise and reduce the sampling error. These findings shed light on the principles that govern the optimal design of the E. coli chemotaxis network specifically, and any system measuring temporal changes more broadly.
title Predicting concentration changes via discrete sampling
topic Molecular Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.05825