Signaling (studies performed in the budding yeast S. cerevisiae)

• How do cells control noise during signal transduction?
• What can the study of noise tell us about the underlying biology?
• How does noise impact evolution?

Why these questions interest us: Signal transduction systems transmit information, often by detecting extracellular signals and transducing them into changes in nuclear gene expression patterns.  While our early work on signaling concerned how signaling pathways can share component yet produce specific outputs, we have shifted our efforts to studying variability in signaling.  Variability (or "noise") in this process can in principle limit the fidelity of information flow, yet the determinants of such variability are largely unknown.  Moreover, little is known regarding the significance of noise and the extent to which it can be used to obtain fundamental biological insights.  Likewise, while variable populations of organisms are the substrate for natural selection, the implications for the evolution of regulatory mechanisms remain largely uninvestigated yet seem likely to be profound.

Our progress in this area and previous studies on signaling specificity can be found in our publications on signaling: click here.