TY - JOUR
T1 - Limits of sensing temporal concentration changes by single cells
AU - Mora, Thierry
AU - Wingreen, Ned S.
PY - 2010/6/14
Y1 - 2010/6/14
N2 - Berg and Purcell calculated how the accuracy of concentration sensing by single-celled organisms is limited by noise from the small number of counted molecules. Here we generalize their results to the sensing of concentration ramps, which is often the biologically relevant situation (e.g., during bacterial chemotaxis). We calculate lower bounds on the uncertainty of ramp sensing by three measurement devices: a single receptor, an absorbing sphere, and a monitoring sphere. We contrast two strategies, simple linear regression of the input signal versus maximum likelihood estimation, and show that the latter can be twice as accurate as the former. Finally, we consider biological implementations of these two strategies, and identify possible signatures that maximum likelihood estimation is implemented by real biological systems.
AB - Berg and Purcell calculated how the accuracy of concentration sensing by single-celled organisms is limited by noise from the small number of counted molecules. Here we generalize their results to the sensing of concentration ramps, which is often the biologically relevant situation (e.g., during bacterial chemotaxis). We calculate lower bounds on the uncertainty of ramp sensing by three measurement devices: a single receptor, an absorbing sphere, and a monitoring sphere. We contrast two strategies, simple linear regression of the input signal versus maximum likelihood estimation, and show that the latter can be twice as accurate as the former. Finally, we consider biological implementations of these two strategies, and identify possible signatures that maximum likelihood estimation is implemented by real biological systems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77953485019&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77953485019&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.248101
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.248101
M3 - Article
C2 - 20867338
AN - SCOPUS:77953485019
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 104
JO - Physical review letters
JF - Physical review letters
IS - 24
M1 - 248101
ER -