CDI Type I:A Communications Theory Approach to Morphogenesis and Architecture Maintenance

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Although the terms "signaling", "communication", and "network" are deeply embedded in the parlance of biology, the more profound meanings of information and communication are overlooked often. Information can be quantified, its flow may be measured, and tight bounds exist for its representation and conveyance between transmitters and receivers in a variety of settings. Communications theory is about efficient communication when energy is at a premium, as is often the case in biology. Perhaps most fundamentally, information theory allows mechanism-blind bounds on decisions and information flow, i.e., the physics of a system allows determination of limits that any method of information description, delivery or processing must obey. Thus, a rigorous application of communications theory to biology seems both attractive and obvious as an organizing principle -- a way to tease order from the myriad engineering solutions that comprise biological systems. Similarly, the study of biological systems -- engineering solutions evolved over eons -- might yield new communication and computational theory. A communications-theoretic approach to multicellular biological systems such as microbial ecosystems and human tissues has received scant (if any) attention, so this research will carefully explore this interdisciplinary intellectual gap. Topics to be considered include the input/output capacity of multi-cellular biological systems, representation methods for structural information, and information flow during tissue development, maintenance, regeneration, and aging, especially in epithelia. Genotypically aberrant epithelial cells can selectively suppress malignant behavior when part of a phenotypically normal structure -- which implies that somehow the cells understand they are part of a normal structure. How such structural information is stored and communicated between cells could prove an important lens on the health and disease of such cellular communities.