Minimal Complexity Requirements for Proteins and Other Combinatorial Recognition Systems

George D. Montañez, Laina Sanders, Howard Deshong

2020

Abstract

How complex do proteins (and other multi-part recognition systems) need to be? Using an information-theoretic framework, we characterize the information costs of recognition tasks and the information capacity of combinatorial recognition systems, to determine minimum complexity requirements for systems performing such tasks. Reducing the recognition task to a finite set of binary constraints, we determine the sizes of minimal equivalent constraint sets using a form of distinguishability, and show how the representation of constraint sets as binary circuits or decision trees also results in minimum constraint set size requirements. We upper-bound the number of configurations a recognition system can distinguish between as a function of the number of parts it contains, which we use to determine the minimum number of parts needed to accomplish a given recognition task. Lastly, we apply our framework to DNA-binding proteins and derive estimates for the minimum number of amino acids needed to accomplish binding tasks of a given complexity.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

D. Montañez G., Sanders L. and Deshong H. (2020). Minimal Complexity Requirements for Proteins and Other Combinatorial Recognition Systems. In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2020) - Volume 3: BIOINFORMATICS; ISBN 978-989-758-398-8, SciTePress, pages 71-78. DOI: 10.5220/0008856800710078

in Bibtex Style

@conference{bioinformatics20,
author={George D. D. Montañez and Laina Sanders and Howard Deshong},
title={Minimal Complexity Requirements for Proteins and Other Combinatorial Recognition Systems},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2020) - Volume 3: BIOINFORMATICS},
year={2020},
pages={71-78},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0008856800710078},
isbn={978-989-758-398-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2020) - Volume 3: BIOINFORMATICS
TI - Minimal Complexity Requirements for Proteins and Other Combinatorial Recognition Systems
SN - 978-989-758-398-8
AU - D. Montañez G.
AU - Sanders L.
AU - Deshong H.
PY - 2020
SP - 71
EP - 78
DO - 10.5220/0008856800710078
PB - SciTePress