Retroactivity attenuation in signaling cascades

Abstract

It has been shown in an earlier work that impedance-like effects, called retroactivity, are found at the interconnection of biomolecular systems just as they occur in several engineering systems. These effects are particularly relevant in signaling cascades that have several downstream targets. These cascades have been extensively studied to determine how a stimulus at the top of the cascade is transmitted and amplified as it propagates toward the bottom of the cascade. In principle, because of retroactivity, a perturbation at the bottom of the cascade can propagate upstream. In this paper, we study the extent to which this propagation occurs by analytically finding retroactivity gains at each stage of the cascade. These gains determine whether a perturbation at the bottom of the cascade is amplified or attenuated as it propagates upstream.