Genetic redundancies enhance information transfer in noisy regulatory circuits

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that intrinsic noise in redundant genetic circuits can enhance information transfer in noisy cellular environments, revealing how noise and heterogeneity influence decision accuracy.

Contribution

It uncovers how noise and redundancy interplay to improve information transfer in cellular regulatory circuits, offering insights for biological understanding and synthetic circuit design.

Findings

Intrinsic noise can enhance information transfer in redundant circuits.

Correlated responses reduce fidelity, while heterogeneity improves it.

Noise and redundancy interplay influences cellular decision accuracy.

Abstract

Cellular decision making is based on regulatory circuits that associate signal thresholds to specific physiological actions. This transmission of information is subjected to molecular noise what can decrease its fidelity. Here, we show instead how such intrinsic noise enhances information transfer in the presence of multiple circuit copies. The result is due to the contribution of noise to the generation of autonomous responses by each copy, which are altogether associated with a common decision. Moreover, factors that correlate the responses of the redundant units (extrinsic noise or regulatory cross-talk) contribute to reduce fidelity, while those that further uncouple them (heterogeneity within the copies) can lead to stronger information gain. Overall, our study emphasizes how the interplay of signal thresholding, redundancy, and noise influences the accuracy of cellular decision making. Understanding this interplay provides a basis to explain collective cell signaling mechanisms, and to engineer robust decisions with noisy genetic circuits.