Noise helped manifestation of intrinsic frequency: A case study in the mesoscopic hormone signaling system

The selective sustainment of nonlinear systems to signals is of great significance to signal transduction in living systems. We take hormone signaling as an example, and investigate the sustainment of internal and external signals. Simulation results prove that signals with ‘‘intrinsic frequency”, no matter if it is noise induced or external injected, can be selectively sustained by exploiting internal and/or external noise. Both the internal and external noise can optimize the noise-induced signals, and the optimization is rather robust to the disturbance of external signals with other frequencies. These results are of significance for weak signal detection and transduction in the presence of external signals. 2009 National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier Limited and Science in China Press. All rights reserved.