Fundamental Limits to Position Determination by Concentration Gradients

Abstract

Position determination in biological systems is often achieved through protein concentration gradients. Measuring the local concentration of such a protein with a spatially varying distribution allows the measurement of position within the system. For these systems to work effectively, position determination must be robust to noise. Here, we calculate fundamental limits to the precision of position determination by concentration gradients due to unavoidable biochemical noise perturbing the gradients. We focus on gradient proteins with first-order reaction kinetics. Systems of this type have been experimentally characterised in both developmental and cell biology settings. For a single gradient we show that, through time-averaging, great precision potentially can be achieved even with very low protein copy numbers. As a second example, we investigate the ability of a system with oppositely directed gradients to find its centre. With this mechanism, positional precision close to the centre improves more slowly with increasing averaging time, and so longer averaging times or higher copy numbers are required for high precision. For both single and double gradients, we demonstrate the existence of optimal length scales for the gradients for which precision is maximized, as well as analyze how precision depends on the size of the concentration-measuring apparatus. These results provide fundamental constraints on the positional precision supplied by concentration gradients in various contexts, including both in developmental biology and also within a single cell. Many biological systems require precise positional information to function correctly. Examples include positioning of the site of cell division and determination of cell fate during embryonic development. This positional information often is encoded in concentration gradients. A specific protein is produced only within a small region, and subsequently spreads into the surrounding space. This leads to a spatial concentration gradient, with the highest protein concentration near the source. By switching on a signal only where the local concentration is above a certain threshold, this gradient can provide positional information. However, intrinsic randomness in biochemical reactions will lead to unavoidable fluctuations in the concentration profile, which in turn will lead to fluctuations in the identified position. We therefore investigated how precisely a noisy concentration gradient can specify positional information. We found that time-averaging of concentration measurements potentially allows for great precision to be achieved even with remarkably low protein copy numbers. We applied our results to a number of examples in both cell and developmental biology, including positioning of the site of cell division in bacteria and yeast, as well as gene expression in the developing Drosophila embryo.