CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Much work has been done on the study of the biochemical mechanisms that result inultrasensitive behavior of simple biochemical modules. However, in a living cell, such modulesare embedded in a bigger network that constrains the range of inputs that the module will receiveas well as the range of the module?s outputs that network will be able to detect. Here, we studiedhow the effective ultrasensitivity of a modular system is affected by these restrictions. We use asimple setup to explore to what extent the dynamic range spanned by upstream and downstreamcomponents of an ultrasensitive module impact on the effective sensitivity of the system.Interestingly, we found for some ultrasensitive motifs that dynamic range limitations imposed bydownstream components can produce effective sensitivities much larger than that of the originalmodule when considered in isolation.