Abstract
Cells use complex networks of interacting molecular components to transfer and process information. These “computational devices of living cells”1 are responsible for many important cellular processes, including cell-cycle regulation and signal transduction. Here we address the issue of the sensitivity of the networks to variations in their biochemical parameters. We propose a mechanism for robust adaptation in simple signal transduction networks. We show that this mechanism applies in particular to bacterial chemotaxis2,3,4,5,6,7. This is demonstrated within a quantitative model which explains, in a unified way, many aspects of chemotaxis, including proper responses to chemical gradients8,9,10,11,12. The adaptation property10,13,14,15,16 is a consequence of the network's connectivity and does not require the ‘fine-tuning’ of parameters. We argue that the key properties of biochemical networks should be robust in order to ensure their proper functioning.
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Acknowledgements
We thank J. Stock, M. Surette, A. C. Maggs, U. Alon, L. Hartwell, M. Kirschner, A.Levine, A. Libchaber, A. Murray and T. Surrey for discussion; A. C. Maggs for help with numerical issues; and J. Stock, M. Surette and H. Berg for introducing us to bacterial chemotaxis and pointing out many useful references. This work has been partially supported by grants from the NIH and the NSF. N.B. is a Rothschild Fellow and a Dicke Fellow at Princeton University.
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Barkai, N., Leibler, S. Robustness in simple biochemical networks. Nature 387, 913–917 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/43199
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/43199
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