Maxwell's demon in biochemical signal transduction with feedback loop.

ABSTRACT: Signal transduction in living cells is vital to maintain life itself, where information transfer in noisy environment plays a significant role. In a rather different context, the recent intensive research on 'Maxwell's demon'-a feedback controller that utilizes information of individual molecules-have led to a unified theory of information and thermodynamics. Here we combine these two streams of research, and show that the second law of thermodynamics with information reveals the fundamental limit of the robustness of signal transduction against environmental fluctuations. Especially, we find that the degree of robustness is quantitatively characterized by an informational quantity called transfer entropy. Our information-thermodynamic approach is applicable to biological communication ins

SUBMITTER: Ito S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4557369 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature