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Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments

Bacterial chemotaxis is a major testing ground for systems biology, including the role of fluctuations and individual variation. Individual bacteria vary in their tumbling frequency and adaptation time. Recently, large cell-cell variation was also discovered in chemotaxis gain, which determines the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Karin, Omer, Alon, Uri
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8319753/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34345809
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102796
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author Karin, Omer
Alon, Uri
author_facet Karin, Omer
Alon, Uri
author_sort Karin, Omer
collection PubMed
description Bacterial chemotaxis is a major testing ground for systems biology, including the role of fluctuations and individual variation. Individual bacteria vary in their tumbling frequency and adaptation time. Recently, large cell-cell variation was also discovered in chemotaxis gain, which determines the sensitivity of the tumbling rate to attractant gradients. Variation in gain is puzzling, because low gain impairs chemotactic velocity. Here, we provide a functional explanation for gain variation by establishing a formal analogy between chemotaxis and algorithms for sampling probability distributions. We show that temporal fluctuations in gain implement simulated tempering, which allows sampling of attractant distributions with many local peaks. Periods of high gain allow bacteria to detect and climb gradients quickly, and periods of low gain allow them to move to new peaks. Gain fluctuations thus allow bacteria to thrive in complex environments, and more generally they may play an important functional role for organism navigation.
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spelling pubmed-83197532021-08-02 Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments Karin, Omer Alon, Uri iScience Article Bacterial chemotaxis is a major testing ground for systems biology, including the role of fluctuations and individual variation. Individual bacteria vary in their tumbling frequency and adaptation time. Recently, large cell-cell variation was also discovered in chemotaxis gain, which determines the sensitivity of the tumbling rate to attractant gradients. Variation in gain is puzzling, because low gain impairs chemotactic velocity. Here, we provide a functional explanation for gain variation by establishing a formal analogy between chemotaxis and algorithms for sampling probability distributions. We show that temporal fluctuations in gain implement simulated tempering, which allows sampling of attractant distributions with many local peaks. Periods of high gain allow bacteria to detect and climb gradients quickly, and periods of low gain allow them to move to new peaks. Gain fluctuations thus allow bacteria to thrive in complex environments, and more generally they may play an important functional role for organism navigation. Elsevier 2021-06-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8319753/ /pubmed/34345809 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102796 Text en © 2021 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Karin, Omer
Alon, Uri
Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
title Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
title_full Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
title_fullStr Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
title_full_unstemmed Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
title_short Temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
title_sort temporal fluctuations in chemotaxis gain implement a simulated-tempering strategy for efficient navigation in complex environments
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8319753/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34345809
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102796
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