Receptor noise and directional sensing in eukaryotic chemotaxis

Abstract

Chemotacting eukaryotic cells are able to detect very small chemical gradients (∼1%) for a large range of background concentrations. For these chemical environments, fluctuations in the number of bound ligands will become important. Here, we investigate the effect of receptor noise in a simplified one-dimensional geometry. The auto- and cross-correlations of the noise sources at the front and the back of the cell are explicitly computed using an effective Monte Carlo simulation tool. The resulting stochastic equations for the investigated directional sensing model can be solved analytically in Fourier space. We determine the chemotactic efficiency, a measure of motility for the cell, as a function of several experimental parameters, leading to explicit experimental predictions. © 2008 The American Physical Society.