Signal processing capacity of the cellular sensory machinery regulates the accuracy of chemotaxis under complex cues.

Chemotaxis is ubiquitous in many biological processes, but it still remains elusive how cells sense and decipher multiple chemical cues. In this study, we postulate a hypothesis that the chemotactic performance of cells under complex cues is regulated by the signal processing capacity of the cellular sensory machinery. The underlying rationale is that cells in vivo should be able to sense and process multiple chemical cues, whose magnitude and compositions are entangled, to determine their migration direction. We experimentally show that the combination of transforming growth factor-β and epidermal growth factor suppresses the chemotactic performance of cancer cells using independent receptors to sense the two cues. Based on this observation, we develop a biophysical framework suggesting that the antagonism is caused by the saturation of the signal processing capacity but not by the mutual repression. Our framework suggests the significance of the signal processing capacity in the cellular sensory machinery. © 2021 The Authors.

Citation

Hye-Ran Moon, Soutick Saha, Andrew Mugler, Bumsoo Han. Signal processing capacity of the cellular sensory machinery regulates the accuracy of chemotaxis under complex cues. iScience. 2021 Nov 19;24(11):103242

PMID: 34746705

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