15 Apr 2011
German Enciso
Department of Mathematics
UC Irvine
A key phenomenon in signal transduction and protein regulation is the all-or-none, ultrasensitive dose response, which transforms a continuous input into a digital output. Multisite systems are often used in conjunction with allosteric effects to create such a behavior. In this talk I describe a non-allosteric mechanism for a multisite system to present strongly ultrasensitive behavior. Applications are given to protein activation through multisite phosphorylation, clusters of receptors and DNA regulation through histone modifications.