Only accessible information is useful

Abstract

Information theory is gaining popularity as a tool to characterize performance of biological systems. However, information is commonly quantified without reference to whether or how a system could extract and use it as a result, information-theoretic quantities are easily misinterpreted. Here, we take the example of pattern-forming developmental systems which are commonly structured as cascades of sequential gene expression steps. Such a multi-tiered structure appears to constitute sub-optimal use of the positional information provided by the input morphogen because noise is added at each tier.