Information propagation in time through allosteric signaling

Abstract

and co-correspondingNaively, one expects the Shannon information communicated by a protein downstream to a signaling network, in which the protein is embedded, to grow monotonically with this protein's rate of product formation. Here we observe that this does not hold for allosterically regulated proteins often found in signaling networks. In particular, we find that the Shannon information communicated by an allosterically regulated protein is a complex function of the transition kinetics between its different allosterically regulated states and their respective product formation rates. Surprisingly, our work implies that allosteric down-regulation of protein product formation may not only be used to silence proteins as one would normally expect. Rather, down-regulation may be used to increase the Shannon information communicated by this protein in a signaling pathway.