Listening to the noise in cells
Advances in using fluorescent proteins in microscopy have made it possible to track the dynamic molecular processes in living biological cells. These trajectories contain a wealth of information. Published in Nature Communications, Ankit Gupta and Mustafa Khammash now present frequency domain computational tools, specifically geared towards quantitatively extracting information about intracellular networks from noisy single-cell imaging data.
Trajectories of molecular processes in living cells are typically noisy but they contain the underlying network's dynamical signature. This signature can be more reliably recovered in the frequency domain rather than the time domain (simplified graphic from publication). These insights allow us to use a noisy trajectory’s frequency spectrum as a basis for discriminating between underlying network models, as well as designing and optimising synthetic circuits like controllers, oscillators, switches etc. such as those developed for the emerging field of medical therapies.
Find original publication:
Gupta, A and M Khammash (2022) external page Frequency spectra and the color of cellular noise. Nature Communications 13, 4305. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31263-x
Learn about the Control Theory and Systems Biology lab led by Mustafa Khammash.