Constructive Role of Internal Noise for the Detection of Weak Signal in Cell System

Taking into account the existence of internal noise in small scale biochemical reaction systems, we studied how the internal noise would influence the detection of weak external signal in the cell system using chemical Langevin equation. The weak signal was too small to, separately, fire calcium spikes for the cell. We found that, near the Hopf bifurcation point, the internal noise could help the calcium oscillation signal cross a threshold value, and at an optimal internal noise level, a resonance occurred among the internal noise, the internal noise-induced calcium oscillations, and the weak signal, so as to enhance intensively the ability of the cell system to detect the weak signal. Since the internal noise was changed via the cell size, this phenomenon demonstrated the existence of an optimal cell size for the signal detection. Interestingly, it was found that the optimal size matched well with the real cell size, which was robust to external stimulus, this was of significant biological meaning.