Transmission information in cells: amplitude and frequency encoding equip cells with different tools.

SILVINA PONCE DAWSON

Campinas

Seminario; Seminario, LNLS; 2023

Cells continuously sense their surroundings to detect modifications and generate responses. Very often concentrations in the extracellular medium change, turning on signaling cascades that eventually result in changes in gene expression. Increasing stimulus strengths can either be encoded in increasing concentration amplitudes or increasing activation frequencies of intermediaries of the pathway. In this talk I will describe how the different way in which amplitude and frequency encoding map environmental changes impact on the cell's information transmission capabilities. While amplitude encoding is optimal for a limited range of stimuli strengths around a finite value, in frequency encoding information transmission improves or remains relatively flat as the stimulus strength increases, provided that certain constraints are satisfied. The apparently redundant combination of both mechanisms in some cell types can then serve the purpose of expanding the dynamic range of the detection. In the talk I will discuss one such example that occurs in cells of S. cerevisiae.