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. 2022 Jul 14:10:927156.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.927156. eCollection 2022.

Exploring Information and Communication Theories for Synthetic Cell Research

Pasquale Stano  1
Affiliations

Exploring Information and Communication Theories for Synthetic Cell Research

Pasquale Stano. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .
No abstract available

Keywords: artificial cells; bottom-up synthetic biology; communication; information; synthetic cells.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Information and communication in SC research. (A) Several reports have demonstrated that SCs can send or receive chemical signals from biological cells or from other SCs. (B) Systems based on SCs that receive signals from other cells are equivalent to a generic scenario where a SC (a “system”, an “agent”) exchange signals with its environment. (C) Two ways of representing “descriptive” information. On the left, a histogram made of three bars. Bar identity represents the variable that carries information, bar height represents its measure. On the right, the same information is represented as a vector in an informational space; the variables are described by the axes, while the vector components represent the variables’ measures. (D) A simplified pictograph representing the trajectories of the environmental vector e and of the system (the SC) vector s in their respective multidimensional spaces. The trajectory of s depends on the initial state of the system ( s 0 ) and on the environmental changes (described by e ) through the function Φ, which ultimately refers to the “organization” of the system (the set of relations between internal and external variables that determine the system dynamics). (E) A SC intended as a reaction network, which can be affected by external stimuli. (F) If a SC is situated in an environment that can “in-form” it, the resulting dynamics (including the achievement of a predetermined goal) is determined by the environment spatio/temporal pattern.
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References

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