Scientists from the Lausanne Federal Polytechnic Institute (EPFL) and the Institute of Physics of Complex Systems Max Planck have elucidated how living organisms extract information from noisy environments. The study delves into how bacteria, cells, and other life forms efficiently utilize minimal resources to accurately interpret surrounding information, despite being affected by noise and having limited energy capabilities.
Living organisms, such as bacteria, possess a remarkable ability to precisely detect changes in their environment, such as chemical gradients to locate more nourishing areas. Similarly, at the cellular level, cells gather information to create stable structures amidst the constant fluctuations of their surroundings.
The researchers highlight that achieving accuracy in biological systems incurs energy costs, where higher accuracy demands more energy expenditure. This principle is well-established in stochastic thermodynamics. Consequently, living systems must strike a balance between achieving maximum accuracy and minimizing energy expenditure.
The study’s primary contribution lies in formulating a model that delineates the signal transmission process, encompassing various levels of interactions. By leveraging information theory and stochastic thermodynamics, the scientists quantified how systems acquire information from the environment. They discovered that optimizing the interactions between system elements enables efficient information collection even with limited energy resources and within finite observation periods.
An intriguing application of this model is its utility in investigating the dynamics and thermodynamics of erythrocyte membranes. Formerly, the membrane “flashing” was attributed to thermal fluctuations, but contemporary data point to an alternative mechanism existing outside the realm of thermodynamic equilibrium. Researchers observed that heightened cytoskeleton activity in the erythrocyte membrane enhances its capacity to glean more information about the cell’s internal dynamics, thereby corroborating the proposed model.
Furthermore, this study paves the way for exploring complex biological processes, like feedback and adaptation mechanisms, which enable living systems to adeptly respond to environmental fluctuations.