Kamimura Atsushi, Kobayashi Tetsuya J
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan.
Front Physiol. 2012 Jun 13;3:203. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2012.00203. eCollection 2012.
Recent experimental observations suggest that cells can show relatively precise and reliable responses to external signals even though substantial noise is inevitably involved in the signals. An intriguing question is the way how cells can manage to do it. One possible way to realize such response for a cell is to evolutionary develop and optimize its intracellular signaling pathways so as to extract relevant information from the noisy signal. We recently demonstrated that certain intracellular signaling reactions could actually conduct statistically optimal information processing. In this paper, we clarify that such optimal reaction operates near bifurcation point. This result suggests that critical-like phenomena in the single-cell level may be linked to efficient information processing inside a cell. In addition, improving the performance of response in the single-cell level is not the only way for cells to realize reliable response. Another possible strategy is to integrate information of individual cells by cell-to-cell interaction such as quorum sensing. Since cell-to-cell interaction is a common phenomenon, it is equally important to investigate how cells can integrate their information by cell-to-cell interaction to realize efficient information processing in the population level. In this paper, we consider roles and benefits of cell-to-cell interaction by considering integrations of obtained information of individuals with the other cells from the viewpoint of information processing. We also demonstrate that, by introducing cell movement, spatial organizations can spontaneously emerge as a result of efficient responses of the population to external signals.
最近的实验观察表明，尽管信号中不可避免地存在大量噪声，但细胞仍能对外部信号表现出相对精确和可靠的反应。一个有趣的问题是细胞如何做到这一点。细胞实现这种反应的一种可能方式是通过进化发展和优化其细胞内信号通路，以便从噪声信号中提取相关信息。我们最近证明，某些细胞内信号反应实际上可以进行统计上最优的信息处理。在本文中，我们阐明这种最优反应在分岔点附近起作用。这一结果表明，单细胞水平上类似临界的现象可能与细胞内的高效信息处理有关。此外，提高单细胞水平的反应性能并非细胞实现可靠反应的唯一方式。另一种可能的策略是通过细胞间相互作用（如群体感应）整合单个细胞的信息。由于细胞间相互作用是一种常见现象，研究细胞如何通过细胞间相互作用整合其信息以在群体水平上实现高效信息处理同样重要。在本文中，我们从信息处理的角度考虑个体获得的信息与其他细胞的整合，探讨细胞间相互作用的作用和益处。我们还证明，通过引入细胞运动，空间组织可以作为群体对外部信号的有效反应而自发出现。
