title: Limits on information transduction through amplitude and frequency regulation of transcription factor activity.
abstract: Signaling pathways often transmit multiple signals through a single shared transcription factor (TF) and encode signal information by differentially regulating TF dynamics. However, signal information will be lost unless it can be reliably decoded by downstream genes. To understand the limits on dynamic information transduction, we apply information theory to quantify how much gene expression information the yeast TF Msn2 can transduce to target genes in the amplitude or frequency of its activation dynamics. We find that although the amount of information transmitted by Msn2 to single target genes is limited, information transduction can be increased by modulating promoter cis-elements or by integrating information from multiple genes. By correcting for extrinsic noise, we estimate an upper bound on information transduction. Overall, we find that information transduction through amplitude and frequency regulation of Msn2 is limited to error-free transduction of signal identity, but not signal intensity information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States.
authors.forename: Anders S
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7540-7858
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States.
authors.forename: Erin K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: O'Shea
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D007257:Information Theory; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic / Q000235:genetics; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*; D059008:Time-Lapse Imaging; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; C081935:MSN2 protein, S cerevisiae; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors
keywords: S. cerevisiae; cell biology; computational biology; dynamics; gene expression noise; information theory; microfluidics; msn2; systems biology; transcription