On The Principles Of Cell Decision-Making: Intracellular Coupling Improves Cell Responses Fidelity Of Noisy Signals

Abstract

Reliability of cell fate decision-making is crucial to biological development. Until today it has not been clear what are biologys design principles that allow for reliable cell decision making under the influence of noise. Here, we attempt to answer this question by drawing an analogy between cell decision-making and information theory. We show that coupling of intracellular signalling pathway networks makes cell phenotypic responses reliable for noisy signals. As a proof of concept, we show how cis-interaction of the Notch-Delta pathway allows for increased performance under the influence of noise. Interestingly, in this case, the coupling principle leads to an efficient energy management. Finally, our postulated principle offers a compelling argument why cellular encoding is organized in a non-linear and non-hierarchical manner.