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Perfect and Near-Perfect Adaptation in a Model of Bacterial Chemotaxis

Bernardo A. Mello ^*  and Yuhai Tu ^*

^* IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, USA; and Physics Department, Catholic University of Brasilia, Brasilia, DF, Brazil

Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Yuhai Tu, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, P. O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598. Tel.: 914-945-2762; Fax: 914-945-4506; E-mail: yuhai{at}us.ibm.com.

The signaling apparatus mediating bacterial chemotaxis can adapt to a wide range of persistent external stimuli. In many cases, the bacterial activity returns to its prestimulus level exactly, and this perfect adaptability is robust against variations in various chemotaxis protein concentrations. We model the bacterial chemotaxis signaling pathway, from ligand binding to CheY phosphorylation. By solving the steady-state equations of the model analytically, we derive a full set of conditions for the system to achieve perfect adaptation. The conditions related to the phosphorylation part of the pathway are discovered for the first time, while other conditions are generalizations of the ones found in previous works. Sensitivity of the perfect adaptation is evaluated by perturbing these conditions. We find that, even in the absence of some of the perfect adaptation conditions, adaptation can be achieved with near-perfect precision as a result of the separation of scales in both chemotaxis protein concentrations and reaction rates, or specific properties of the receptor distribution in different methylation states. Since near-perfect adaptation can be found in much larger regions of the parameter space than that defined by the perfect adaptation conditions, their existence is essential to understand robustness in bacterial chemotaxis.

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