Using Fluctuation Analysis to Establish Causal Relations between Cellular Events without Experimental Perturbation

作者：Welf Erik S; Danuser Gaudenz^*

来源：Biophysical Journal, 2014, 107(11): 2492-2498.

DOI：10.1016/j.bpj.2014.10.032

Experimental perturbations are commonly used to establish causal relationships between the molecular components of a pathway and their cellular functions; however, this approach suffers inherent limitations. Especially in pathways with a significant level of nonlinearity and redundancy among components, such perturbations induce compensatory responses that obscure the actual function of the targeted component in the unperturbed pathway. A complementary approach uses constitutive fluctuations in component activities to identify the hierarchy of information flow through pathways. Here, we review the motivation for using perturbation-free approaches and highlight recent advances made in using perturbation-free fluctuation analysis as a means to establish causality among cellular events.

• 出版日期2014-12-2