The threshold of an excitable system serves as a control mechanism for noise filtering during chemotaxis.

ABSTRACT: Chemotaxis, the migration of cells in the direction of a chemical gradient, is of utmost importance in various biological processes. In recent years, research has demonstrated that the underlying mechanism that controls cell migration is an excitable network. One of the properties that characterizes excitability is the presence of a threshold for activation. Here, we show that excitable systems possess noise filtering capabilities that enable faster and more efficient directed migration compared to other systems that also include a threshold, such as ultrasensitive switches. We demonstrate that this filtering ability is a consequence of the varying responses of excitable systems to step and pulse stimuli. Whereas the response to step inputs is determined solely by the magnitude of the stim

SUBMITTER: Bhattacharya S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6066244 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature