ArticlePLoS computational biology2014
Thermodynamic costs of information processing in sensory adaptation.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Biological Systems as Physical Data Processors: Evolution as a Case of Embodied Computing.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Identification and quantification of irreversibility in stochastic systems.Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP · 2026Review
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- EMI-EDU: reframing learning and education through energy, mass and information.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Stochastic thermodynamics for biological functions.Quantitative biology (Beijing, China) · 2025Review
- Physical extraction of antigen and information.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Physical Constraints in Intracellular Signaling: The Cost of Sending a Bit.Physical review letters · 2023Article
- Information flow, gating, and energetics in dimeric molecular motors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- The optimal strategy balancing risk and speed predicts DNA damage checkpoint override times.Nature physics · 2022Article
- Percolation may explain efficiency, robustness, and economy of the brain.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2022Article
- Theoretical foundations of studying criticality in the brain.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2022Review
- Improved bounds on entropy production in living systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Design of a MAPK signalling cascade balances energetic cost versus accuracy of information transmission.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Information theory, predictability and the emergence of complex life.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- The Reactive Species Interactome: Evolutionary Emergence, Biological Significance, and Opportunities for Redox Metabolomics and Personalized Medicine.Antioxidants & redox signaling · 2017Review
- A dual-docking microfluidic cell migration assay (DIntegrative biology : quantitative biosciences from nano to macro · 2017Article
- Thermodynamic Paradigm for Solution Demixing Inspired by Nuclear Transport in Living Cells.Physical review letters · 2017Article
- Backward transfer entropy: Informational measure for detecting hidden Markov models and its interpretations in thermodynamics, gambling and causality.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- Information processing in bacteria: memory, computation, and statistical physics: a key issues review.Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society (Great Britain) · 2016Review
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4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Biological sensory systems react to changes in their surroundings. They are characterized by fast response and slow adaptation to varying environmental cues. Insofar as sensory adaptive systems map environmental changes to changes of their internal degrees of freedom, they can be regarded as computational devices manipulating information. Landauer established that information is ultimately physical, and its manipulation subject to the entropic and energetic bounds of thermodynamics. Thus the fundamental costs of biological sensory adaptation can be elucidated by tracking how the information the system has about its environment is altered. These bounds are particularly relevant for small organisms, which unlike everyday computers, operate at very low energies. In this paper, we establish a general framework for the thermodynamics of information processing in sensing. With it, we quantify how during sensory adaptation information about the past is erased, while information about the present is gathered. This process produces entropy larger than the amount of old information erased and has an energetic cost bounded by the amount of new information written to memory. We apply these principles to the E. coli's chemotaxis pathway during binary ligand concentration changes. In this regime, we quantify the amount of information stored by each methyl group and show that receptors consume energy in the range of the information-theoretic minimum. Our work provides a basis for further inquiries into more complex phenomena, such as gradient sensing and frequency response.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.