Author
Listed:
- U. Alon
(Princeton University
Princeton University)
- M. G. Surette
(Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases)
- N. Barkai
(Princeton University)
- S. Leibler
(Princeton University
Princeton University)
Abstract
Networks of interacting proteins orchestrate the responses of living cells to a variety of external stimuli1, but how sensitive is the functioning of these protein networks to variations in theirbiochemical parameters? One possibility is that to achieve appropriate function, the reaction rate constants and enzyme concentrations need to be adjusted in a precise manner, and any deviation from these ‘fine-tuned’ values ruins the network's performance. An alternative possibility is that key properties of biochemical networks are robust2; that is, they are insensitive to the precise values of the biochemical parameters. Here we address this issue in experiments using chemotaxis of Escherichia coli, one of the best-characterized sensory systems3,4. We focus on how response and adaptation to attractant signals vary with systematic changes in the intracellular concentration of the components of the chemotaxis network. We find that some properties, such as steady-state behaviour and adaptation time, show strong variations in response to varying protein concentrations. In contrast, the precision of adaptation is robust and does not vary with the protein concentrations. This is consistent with a recently proposed molecular mechanism for exact adaptation, where robustness is a direct consequence of the network's architecture2.
Suggested Citation
U. Alon & M. G. Surette & N. Barkai & S. Leibler, 1999.
"Robustness in bacterial chemotaxis,"
Nature, Nature, vol. 397(6715), pages 168-171, January.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6715:d:10.1038_16483
DOI: 10.1038/16483
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6715:d:10.1038_16483. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.