Bacteria as information processing devices

Keita Kamino^1*

¹Institute of Molecular Biology, Taipei, Taiwan

* Presenter:Keita Kamino, email:kkamino@gate.sinica.edu.tw

Organisms acquire and use sensory information to guide their behaviors. However, it is unclear whether and how this information constrains the ability of organisms to perform behavioral tasks. In a recent work, using E. coli chemotaxis as a model system, we showed that the sensory information that a bacterium acquires sets an upper limit on its behavioral performance. Furthermore, combined with quantitative experiments, we quantified the rate at which E. coli acquire information during navigation and discovered that E. coli use the acquired information efficiently. More recently, we identified the dominant noise source that limits the amount of information a single E. coli cell gets from the environment. In this talk, we will discuss the gist of these findings.

Keywords: Cell signaling, Information theory, Inference, Bacterial chemotaxis, Fluorescence imaging