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Fig. 3 | BMC Bioinformatics

Fig. 3

From: Signaling pathways have an inherent need for noise to acquire information

Fig. 3

Acquired information, output range and noise at different signal concentrations. Contour plots of a information, b output range, and c noise at different receptor signal ratios NRT/NSmax (x axis), and at different affinities (y axis). a–c The diagonal white-dashed lines circumscribe the region with maximal information acquisition. The large red-dashed rectangles circumscribe the region with biologically observed ranges of receptor-signal affinities ([10−6 M, 10−9 M]) and NRT/NSmax ratios (NRT = 10–8 and 10−7 M ≤ NSmax ≤ 10−5 M). The small red-dashed rectangles circumscribe the region where NSmax = NRT and where the system is noise-free, reaches the maximally possible output range, and where information acquisition is ‘perfect’. Acquired information, output range and noise are plotted from minimally to maximally observed values, color-coded as indicated by the color bar. d–f Noise, output range and information observed in numerical simulations of the receptor-signal system at different affinities (Keq) and with different concentrations of R and S. a R = 10−9 M and S = [10−9 M, 10−7 M]. b R = 10−8 M and S = [10−8 M, 10−6 M]. a R = 10−7 M and S = [10−7 M, 10−5 M]. Information, noise, and output range are normalized by their respective maximal values

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