Efficient fold-change detection based on protein-protein interactions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a protein-protein interaction-based fold-change detection mechanism that is energy-efficient, noise-resistant, and capable of fast, precise responses in biological systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel, energy-efficient fold-change detection mechanism based on protein interactions, differing from transcriptional network models.

Findings

Mechanism is energy-efficient and does not consume chemical energy.

It is resistant to transcriptional and translational noise.

Provides fast and precise responses in eukaryotic-like conditions.

Abstract

Various biological sensory systems exhibit a response to a relative change of the stimulus, often referred to as fold-change detection. In the last few years fold-change detecting mechanisms, based on transcriptional networks, have been proposed. Here we present fold-change detecting mechanism, based on protein-protein interactions, consisting of two interacting proteins. This mechanism, in contrast to previously proposed mechanisms, does not consume chemical energy and is not subject to transcriptional and translational noise. We show by analytical and numerical calculations, that the mechanism can have a fast, precise and efficient response for parameters that are relevant to eukaryotic cells.