3 research outputs found
Shannon Capacity of Signal Transduction for Multiple Independent Receptors
Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) is considered a model system for signal
transduction, the mechanism by which cells exchange chemical messages. Our
previous work calculated the Shannon capacity of a single cAMP receptor;
however, a typical cell may have thousands of receptors operating in parallel.
In this paper, we calculate the capacity of a cAMP signal transduction system
with an arbitrary number of independent, indistinguishable receptors. By
leveraging prior results on feedback capacity for a single receptor, we show
(somewhat unexpectedly) that the capacity is achieved by an IID input
distribution, and that the capacity for n receptors is n times the capacity for
a single receptor.Comment: Accepted for presentation at the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on
Information Theory (ISIT
Molecular Communication Theoretical Modeling and Analysis of SARS-CoV2 Transmission in Human Respiratory System
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) caused the
ongoing pandemic. This pandemic devastated the world by killing more than a
million people, as of October 2020. It is imperative to understand the
transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV2 so that novel and interdisciplinary
prevention, diagnostic, and therapeutic techniques could be developed. In this
work, we model and analyze the transmission of SARS-CoV2 through the human
respiratory tract from a molecular communication perspective. We consider that
virus diffusion occurs in the mucus layer so that the shape of the tract does
not have a significant effect on the transmission. Hence, this model reduces
the inherent complexity of the human respiratory system. We further provide the
impulse response of SARS-CoV2-ACE2 receptor binding event to determine the
proportion of the virus population reaching different regions of the
respiratory tract. Our findings confirm the results in the experimental
literature on higher mucus flow rate causing virus migration to the lower
respiratory tract. These results are especially important to understand the
effect of SARS-CoV2 on the different human populations at different ages who
have different mucus flow rates and ACE2 receptor concentrations in the
different regions of the respiratory tract.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale
Communication
Information Rates of Controlled Protein Interactions Using Terahertz Communication
In this work, we present a paradigm bridging electromagnetic (EM) and
molecular communication through a stimuli-responsive intra-body model. It has
been established that protein molecules, which play a key role in governing
cell behavior, can be selectively stimulated using Terahertz (THz) band
frequencies. By triggering protein vibrational modes using THz waves, we induce
changes in protein conformation, resulting in the activation of a controlled
cascade of biochemical and biomechanical events. To analyze such an
interaction, we formulate a communication system composed of a nanoantenna
transmitter and a protein receiver. We adopt a Markov chain model to account
for protein stochasticity with transition rates governed by the nanoantenna
force. Both two-state and multi-state protein models are presented to depict
different biological configurations. Closed form expressions for the mutual
information of each scenario is derived and maximized to find the capacity
between the input nanoantenna force and the protein state. The results we
obtain indicate that controlled protein signaling provides a communication
platform for information transmission between the nanoantenna and the protein
with a clear physical significance. The analysis reported in this work should
further research into the EM-based control of protein networks.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscienc