Design principles of a bacterial signalling network

Markus Kollmann (), Linda Løvdok, Kilian Bartholomé, Jens Timmer and Victor Sourjik
Additional contact information
Markus Kollmann: Universität Freiburg
Linda Løvdok: University of Heidelberg
Kilian Bartholomé: Universität Freiburg
Jens Timmer: Universität Freiburg
Victor Sourjik: University of Heidelberg

Nature, 2005, vol. 438, issue 7067, 504-507

Abstract: Abstract Cellular biochemical networks have to function in a noisy environment using imperfect components. In particular, networks involved in gene regulation or signal transduction allow only for small output tolerances, and the underlying network structures can be expected to have undergone evolution for inherent robustness against perturbations1. Here we combine theoretical and experimental analyses to investigate an optimal design for the signalling network of bacterial chemotaxis, one of the most thoroughly studied signalling networks in biology. We experimentally determine the extent of intercellular variations in the expression levels of chemotaxis proteins and use computer simulations to quantify the robustness of several hypothetical chemotaxis pathway topologies to such gene expression noise. We demonstrate that among these topologies the experimentally established chemotaxis network of Escherichia coli has the smallest sufficiently robust network structure, allowing accurate chemotactic response for almost all individuals within a population. Our results suggest that this pathway has evolved to show an optimal chemotactic performance while minimizing the cost of resources associated with high levels of protein expression. Moreover, the underlying topological design principles compensating for intercellular variations seem to be highly conserved among bacterial chemosensory systems2.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04228 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:438:y:2005:i:7067:d:10.1038_nature04228

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature04228

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().