Information theoretic approach in molecular interactions and implications in molecular evolution.

Shannon’s information communication theory tells much about the reliable message transmission and has a wide scope of application in communication technologies. The aim of this work is to present the implementation of the information communication theory in the cellular recognition or molecular interaction event models to quantify the message transmission capacities of molecular binding patterns and complexes. It has implications in molecular evolution such that the pattern formation by varied combinations of a possible number of binding events does not necessitate the presence of different types of receptor–ligand complexes. Signals through the same and different types of receptor–ligand complexes seem to have equal information amounts. This is suggesting the possible role of pattern formation in differentiation of distinct conditions, maybe even changing local concentration gradients or so, through sensing the patterns of relevance. Further, recognition of the patterns that are formed up of the same binding partners would be the step preceding the recognition of the patterns with discrete binding partners. All these considerations are valid for cellular networks, wherein the communicating cells are the sources of binding target molecules and are thus imposing diffusion dependent concentration gradients and variations in the probabilities of the binding events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]