title: Efficient fold-change detection based on protein-protein interactions.
abstract: Various biological sensory systems exhibit a response to a relative change of the stimulus, often referred to as fold-change detection. In the past few years, fold-change detecting mechanisms, based on transcriptional networks, have been proposed. Here we present a fold-change detecting mechanism, based on protein-protein interactions, consisting of two interacting proteins. This mechanism does not consume chemical energy and is not subject to transcriptional and translational noise, in contrast to previously proposed mechanisms. We show by analytical and numerical calculations that the mechanism is robust and can have a fast, precise, and efficient response for parameters that are relevant to eukaryotic cells.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Buijsman
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sheinman
mesh_terms: D001665:Binding Sites; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008954:Models, Biological; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011485:Protein Binding; D017510:Protein Folding; D025941:Protein Interaction Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins