Noise Reduction in Complex Biological Switches.

ABSTRACT: Cells operate in noisy molecular environments via complex regulatory networks. It is possible to understand how molecular counts are related to noise in specific networks, but it is not generally clear how noise relates to network complexity, because different levels of complexity also imply different overall number of molecules. For a fixed function, does increased network complexity reduce noise, beyond the mere increase of overall molecular counts? If so, complexity could provide an advantage counteracting the costs involved in maintaining larger networks. For that purpose, we investigate how noise affects multistable systems, where a small amount of noise could lead to very different outcomes; thus we turn to biochemical switches. Our method for comparing networks of different structur

SUBMITTER: Cardelli L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4745012 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature