Positional information trade-offs in boundary-driven reaction-diffusion systems
arXiv:2412.21113 · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/adb7fc
Abstract
Individual components such as cells, particles, or agents within a larger system often require detailed understanding of their relative position to act accordingly, enabling the system as a whole to function in an organised and efficient manner. Through the concept of positional information, such components are able to specify their position in order to, e.g., create robust spatial patterns or coordinate specific functionality. Such complex behaviour generally occurs far from thermodynamic equilibrium and thus requires the dissipation of free energy to sustain functionality. We show that in boundary-driven simple exclusion systems with position-dependent Langmuir kinetics, non-trivial Pareto-optimal trade-offs exist between the positional information, rescaled entropy production rate and global reaction current. Phase transitions in the optimal protocols that tune the densities of the system boundaries emerge as a result, showing that distinct protocols are able to exchange global optimality similar to phase coexistence in liquid-gas phase transitions, and that increasing the positional information can lead to diminishing returns when considering increased dissipation.
13 pages, 9 figures
References in corpus (19)
- Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems, and molecular machines
- Entropy production along a stochastic trajectory and an integral fluctuation theorem
- Thermodynamic uncertainty relation for biomolecular processes
- Non equilibrium steady states: fluctuations and large deviations of the density and of the current
- Are biological systems poised at criticality?
- Dissipation bounds all steady-state current fluctuations
- Ensemble and Trajectory Thermodynamics: A Brief Introduction
- The Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process with Langmuir Kinetics
- Large Deviation of the Density Profile in the Steady State of the Open Symmetric Simple Exclusion Process
- Free Energy Functional for Nonequilibrium Systems: An Exactly Solvable Case
- Synthesis and materialization of a reaction-diffusion French flag pattern
- Fundamental Limits to Position Determination by Concentration Gradients
- Information Thermodynamics of Turing Patterns
- Clustering and optimal arrangement of enzymes in reaction-diffusion systems
- Optimization of collective enzyme activity via spatial localization
- Finding the last bits of positional information
- Precision and dissipation of a stochastic Turing pattern
- Systems poised to criticality through Pareto selective forces
- Limits to positional information in boundary-driven systems