Abstract
Experimental perturbations are commonly used to establish causal relationships between the molecular components of a pathway and their cellular functions; however, this approach suffers inherent limitations. Especially in pathways with a significant level of nonlinearity and redundancy among components, such perturbations induce compensatory responses that obscure the actual function of the targeted component in the unperturbed pathway. A complementary approach uses constitutive fluctuations in component activities to identify the hierarchy of information flow through pathways. Here, we review the motivation for using perturbation-free approaches and highlight recent advances made in using perturbation-free fluctuation analysis as a means to establish causality among cellular events.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2492-2498 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Biophysical journal |
Volume | 107 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 8 2014 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biophysics