Interesting Article

Chris Myers via FLUENT Verification Project

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 12:05:44 -0700

!FLUENT Verification Project

Hi Chris,

I would be interested in what you think of this article:

#^https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07085-1

Cheers,
Chris

Winstead

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 15:05:18 -0700

It seems interesting. I haven't gone over all the math in detail, but I'm not completely sure it's novel on the info theory side. Their info-theory citations are few and quite old. The "state of the art" Blahut-Arimoto method is not exactly the last word in capacity theory (there's been a lot of work in the field since the 70s). It's odd that they say there is no framework for multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) signaling, since that's been one of the primary areas of info theory for over 20 years. Maybe they mean to say that a MIMO framework hasn't been developed for specialized application to biochemical networks?

Novelty aside, the capacity reveals an upper bound on reliable communication in a "channel," which can be stretched to mean any process where there's a possibility for error. In biochemical applications, systems have often been found to operate close to the capacity bound, so the capacity may serve as a useful model of what the system can do under different parametric conditions. I'll need to spend some time to understand this particular application.

Chris Myers

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 15:52:56 -0700

Thanks for your assessment. I have colleague in Nebraska that has worked on similar connections of communication theory and biology (#^https://mbite.unl.edu/massimiliano-pierobon). His work also might be interesting to you.

Finally, have you heard of this conference: #^http://nanocom.acm.org/nanocom2020/index.php The people at that meeting are also looking into these connections.