Physics & Astronomy
Colloquium
Biochemical reactions constitute the cell's computing language, often operating with surprisingly small numbers of molecules. There is renewed interest in analyzing the impact of noise associated with these small numbers and the reliability with which cell's crucial tasks can be carried out. Thirty years ago, Berg and Purcell showed that bacterial chemotaxis, where a single-celled organism must respond to small changes in concentration of chemicals outside the cell, is limited directly by molecule counting noise and that aspects of the bacteria's behavioral and computational strategies must be chosen to minimize the effects of this noise. In this talk, I will revisit and generalize their arguments to estimate the physical limits to signaling processes within the cell and argue that recent experiments are consistent with performance approaching these limits. Performance near the limits allowed by the laws of physics appears as a common theme in biology that cuts across scales, systems and organisms.
3:30 PM, Friday, October 20, 2006
Room 155, Chem-Phys Building
Dr. Sima Setayeshgar
Department of Physics
Indiana University, Bloomington
``Physical Limits to Biochemical Signaling''
Refreshments will be served in CP 179 at 3:15 PM