19 January 2010

Why make something noisy?

The benefit of sampling
or maybe trying every ombination along a spectrum
a maze
Minesweeper? - except a wrong turn can't be completely detrimental to the whole system .... maybe though - aging / death discussion

Positive feedback loops --> bistable, bimodal phenotype

ex. S. cerevisiae with galactose (Acar paper) - have 2 positive, 1 negative - negative allows switching between states
perhaps the two states can be complementary to each other
random on/off transition
barcodes? decoding, decrypting - combination lock-ish - bacteria as a random number generator - stops when it fits the "slot"

Meeting with Dr. Campbell

went through papers
positive feedback loops are important
Minesweeper --> maybe Battleship
the aging papers Dr. C sent - thinking can somehow randomly switch something on, if beneficial to survival @ that time, will select for those and kill the others
maybe some cell differentiation using +/- feedback
maybe some antenna-ish like sampling - a Biosensor - cell has lots of sensors, randomly sample for something, if detect something with one of the sensors then report...do something else while other cells can keep sensing

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