2009/03/01 by Yonatan Savir, Tsvi Tlusty
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Computer Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Channel (broadcasting) #Chemistry #Cognitive science #Computer science #Conformational change #Mass Spectrometry Techniques and Applications #Protein Structure and Dynamics #Psychology #Stereochemistry #Telecommunications #bioluminescence and chemiluminescence research #cs.IT #math.IT #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.BM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1109/ciss.2009.5054833
published as Workshop on Biological and Bio-Inspired Information Theory, 43rd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, March 18-20, 2009 2009 , Page(s): 835 - 840 · Keywords--Molecular information channels, molecular recognition, conformational proofreading. http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/tlusty/papers/IEEE2009b.pdf
openalex publication_date 2009/03/01 · arxiv created 2010/07/26 · arxiv updated 2010/07/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Molecular recognition, which is essential in processing information in biological systems, takes place in a crowded noisy biochemical environment and requires the recognition of a specific target within a background of various similar competing molecules. We consider molecular recognition as a transmission of information via a noisy channel and use this analogy to gain insights on the optimal, or fittest, molecular recognizer. We focus on the optimal structural properties of the molecules such as flexibility and conformation. We show that conformational changes upon binding, which often occur during molecular recognition, may optimize the detection performance of the recognizer. We thus suggest a generic design principle termed ‘conformational proofreading’ in which deformation enhances detection. We evaluate the optimal flexibility of the molecular recognizer, which is analogous to the stochasticity in a decision unit. In some scenarios, a flexible recognizer, i.e., a stochastic decision unit, performs better than a rigid, deterministic one. As a biological example, we discuss conformational changes during homologous recombination, the process of genetic exchange between two DNA strands.