Optimal Size for Maximal Energy Efficiency in Information Processing of Biological Systems Due to Bistability

TL;DR

This study models bistable biological units to determine how their size affects energy efficiency in information processing, revealing an optimal number of units that maximizes efficiency influenced by energy costs.

Contribution

It analytically links the size of bistable biological systems to their energy efficiency in information encoding, highlighting the role of energy costs in system size optimization.

Findings

Optimal number of units maximizes energy efficiency.

Energy cost influences the system size.

Biological systems may evolve size for energy efficiency.

Abstract

Energy efficiency is closely related to the evolution of biological systems and is important to their information processing. In this paper, we calculated the excitation probability of a simple model of a bistable biological unit in response to pulsatile inputs, and its spontaneous excitation rate due to noise perturbation. Then we analytically calculated the mutual information, energy cost, and energy efficiency of an array of these bistable units. We found that the optimal number of units could maximize this array's energy efficiency in encoding pulse inputs, which depends on the fixed energy cost. We conclude that demand for energy efficiency in biological systems may strongly influence the size of these systems under the pressure of natural selection.