ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Limits to the precision of gradient sensing with spatial communication and temporal integration.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Directed migration of cancer cells: a systems biophysics perspective.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Emergent eukaryotic directional sensing via receptor degradation and diffusion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Integrating inverse reinforcement learning into data-driven mechanistic computational models: a novel paradigm to decode cancer cell heterogeneity.Frontiers in systems biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Single-cell directional sensing from just a few receptor binding events.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- The impact of cell size on morphogen gradient precision.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- High-throughput co-culture system for analysis of spatiotemporal cell-cell signaling.Biosensors & bioelectronics · 2023Article
- A Microfluidic Device for Long-Term Maintenance of Organotypic Liver Cultures.Advanced materials technologies · 2023Article
- Deduction of signaling mechanisms from cellular responses to multiple cues.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2022Article
- The role of cell geometry and cell-cell communication in gradient sensing.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- A single-cell resolved cell-cell communication model explains lineage commitment in hematopoiesis.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2021Article
- Revising Berg-Purcell for finite receptor kinetics.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
- Article
- The many bits of positional information.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2021Review
- Physical constraints on accuracy and persistence during breast cancer cell chemotaxis.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- The body electric 2.0: recent advances in developmental bioelectricity for regenerative and synthetic bioengineering.Current opinion in biotechnology · 2018Review
- Minimal Network Topologies for Signal Processing during Collective Cell Chemotaxis.Biophysical journal · 2018Article
- Collective gradient sensing and chemotaxis: modeling and recent developments.Journal of physics. Condensed matter : an Institute of Physics journal · 2018Review
- Control of neurite growth and guidance by an inhibitory cell-body signal.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Cell-to-cell variation sets a tissue-rheology-dependent bound on collective gradient sensing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Gradient sensing requires at least two measurements at different points in space. These measurements must then be communicated to a common location to be compared, which is unavoidably noisy. Although much is known about the limits of measurement precision by cells, the limits placed by the communication are not understood. Motivated by recent experiments, we derive the fundamental limits to the precision of gradient sensing in a multicellular system, accounting for communication and temporal integration. The gradient is estimated by comparing a "local" and a "global" molecular reporter of the external concentration, where the global reporter is exchanged between neighboring cells. Using the fluctuation-dissipation framework, we find, in contrast to the case when communication is ignored, that precision saturates with the number of cells independently of the measurement time duration, because communication establishes a maximum length scale over which sensory information can be reliably conveyed. Surprisingly, we also find that precision is improved if the local reporter is exchanged between cells as well, albeit more slowly than the global reporter. The reason is that whereas exchange of the local reporter weakens the comparison, it decreases the measurement noise. We term such a model "regional excitation-global inhibition." Our results demonstrate that fundamental sensing limits are necessarily sharpened when the need to communicate information is taken into account.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.