Abstract

Cells sense and respond to their environment by activating distinct intracellular signaling pathways, however an individual cells ability to faithfully transmit and discriminate environmental signals is thought to be limited. To assess the fidelity of signal transmission in the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway, we first developed an optimized genetically encoded sensor that had an increased dynamic range and reduced variation under basal conditions. We then used this reporter to track responses to varying doses of IGF-I in live cells and found that signaling responses from individual cells overlapped across a wide range of IGF-I doses, suggesting limited transmission accuracy. However, further analysis of individual cell traces revealed that responses were constant over time without stochastic fluctuations. We devised a new information theoretic approach to calculate the channel capacity using variance of the single cell time course data--rather than population-level variance as has been previously used--and predicted that cells were capable of discriminating multiple growth factor doses. We validated these predictions by tracking individual cell responses to multiple IGF-I doses and found that cells can accurately distinguish at least four different IGF-I concentrations, as demonstrated by their distinct responses. Furthermore, we found a similar discriminatory ability to pathway inhibition, as assessed by responses to the PI3K inhibitor alpelisib. Our studies indicate that cells can faithfully transmit an IGF-I input into a down-stream signaling response and that heterogeneous responses result from variation in the input-output relation across the population. These observations reveal the importance of viewing each cell as having its own communication channel and underscore the importance of understanding responses at the single cell level.