title: The influence of receptor positioning on chemotactic information.
abstract: Chemotaxis, or gradient following, is important in many biological systems, but suffers from noise. How receptors are positioned on the cell or sensing device influences the quality of the inferences they can support about the gradient, suggesting that their configuration might be optimised. We show that for an elliptical sensing device, inhomogeneous receptor placement could be a potential approach for cells to eliminate bias in the posterior distribution of the gradient direction. We use information theory to calculate the mutual information between the gradient and the binding pattern, thus finding the optimal receptor arrangement for gradient sensing.
authors.affiliation: Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL, London, UK.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dayan
authors.affiliation: Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia; School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: G J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Goodhill
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D002628:Chemoreceptor Cells / Q000378:metabolism*; D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000502:physiology*; D007257:Information Theory; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008954:Models, Biological; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells / Q000378:metabolism*
keywords: Bayesian inference; Chemotaxis; Information theory; Statistical inference