TRANSIENT FREQUENCY PREFERENCE IN SIMPLE CELL SIGNALING MOTIFS

JULIANA REVES SZEMERE; ROCIO BALDERRAMA; CONSTANZA SANCHEZ DE LA VEGA; ALEJANDRA C VENTURA

Jornada; Encuentro de Jóvenes Biofísicos 2020; 2020

In many biological contexts it is important to understand how the cellsignaling system responds to time-dependent inputs. Signaling pathwaysstimulated by inputs that change rapidly over time need to process a significantamount of information. How much information they are able to process per unit oftime is proportional to its bandwidth, which is determined by measuringthe system’s response to fluctuating signals at differentfrequencies. The larger the bandwidth of a pathway, the shorter itsresponse time and the more accurately its response to a rapidly varyingsignal. The focus of the work presented here is to identify conditions for whichsimple signaling topologies can optimize a given response at certainintermediate input frequencies, where by optimizing we mean, forexample, maximizing the production or the level of activation of aprotein at these frequencies. We refer to this optimization as frequencyencoding. Resonance is typically measured in quasi steady-state (long lastingpulsatile signals). By using a combined computational and theoretical approach,we show that resonance can be obtained for pulsatile input signals that areactive for a short number of periods as compared with the time scale of thesignaling component processing that input,. We call this effect transient frequencypreference (TFP) since  the systems weconsider do not exhibit resonance when using long lasting pulsatile signal. TFPalso emerges for the same signaling system, with the long lasting pulsatilesignal, provided that the downstream singling components are fast enough toread pre-steady-state information.