Multiplexing Biochemical Signals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that living cells can multiplex multiple biochemical signals through a shared pathway, encoding and decoding them to transmit up to 2 bits of information reliably.

Contribution

It reveals that cells can transmit multiple signals simultaneously via a common pathway and decode them with high specificity, reaching maximum information capacity.

Findings

Cells can encode two binary signals in a shared protein concentration.

The network can transmit up to 2 bits of information under biological conditions.

Decoding allows reliable retrieval of individual signals from multiplexed inputs.

Abstract

In this paper we show that living cells can multiplex biochemical signals, i.e. transmit multiple signals through the same signaling pathway simultaneously, and yet respond to them very specifically. We demonstrate how two binary input signals can be encoded in the concentration of a common signaling protein, which is then decoded such that each of the two output signals provides reliable information about one corresponding input. Under biologically relevant conditions the network can reach the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted, which is 2 bits.