Information Processing in Living Cells: Mapping a Logic Gate to a Gene Regulation Event

Abstract

In living cells, signal chains process the information that flows between the signal reception and the gene usage. This paper investigates the conjecture that logic gates play a role. In the mammalian preimplantation embryo, cells either become part of the placenta, or part of the embryo proper; i.e., they enter either the trophectoderm (TE) line, or the inner cell mass (ICM) line. TE cells express a caudal-related homeogene (CDX2), whose induction is regulated by two signal chains. A logic AND gate was mapped to the regulative DNA region of the CDX2 gene, which integrated the signaling from both chains. The gate accounts for all of the available experimental findings, which suggests that it is instrumental for CDX2 induction.

Keywords

• intracellular signal chains
• information processing
• preimplantation embryo
• logic gates
• interactive networks