Noise-induced enhancement of signal transduction across voltage-dependent ion channels

摘要: The presence of noise in a signal transduction system usually interferes with its ability to transfer information reliably. But many nonlinear systems can use enhance performance, and this phenomenon, called stochastic resonance, may underlie the extraordinary some biological detect amplify small signals noisy environments. Previous work has demonstrated occurrence resonance complex transducers neural pathways, but possibility that it could occur at sub-cellular level remained open. Here we report observation voltage-dependent ion channels formed by peptide alamethicin. A hundred-fold increase induced external is accompanied growth output signal-to-noise ratio. considered here represents simplest yet known exhibit resonance.