Getting it right: Suppression and leveraging of noise in robust decision-making

Abstract

Noise is a ubiquitous feature for all organisms growing in nature. Noise (defined here as stochastic variation) in the availability of nutrients, water and light profoundly impacts their growth and development. Not only is noise present as an external factor but cellular processes themselves are noisy. Therefore, it is remarkable that organisms can display robust control of growth and development despite noise. To survive, various mechanisms to suppress noise have evolved. However, it is also becoming apparent that noise is not just a nuisance that organisms must suppress but can be beneficial as low noise can facilitate the response of an organism to a sub-threshold input signal in a stochastic resonance mechanism. This review discusses mechanisms capable of noise suppression or noise leveraging that might play a significant role in robust temporal regulation of an organism's response to their noisy environment.

Keywords

Noise; stochastic resonance; robustness

Published in

Quantitative Plant Biology
2024, volume: 5, article number: e10
Publisher: CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

SLU Authors

• Bhalerao, Rishikesh P.

  • Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Botany

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/qpb.2024.10

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/140390