A new study<\/a> by University of Chicago postdoctoral fellow Carlos Floyd in collaboration with Prof. Aaron Dinner, Assoc. Prof. Arvind Murugan and Prof. Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan sheds light on this hidden world of \u201cbiological hardware,\u201d exploring how cells perform complex feats of decision-making. This process relies on chemical networks that are highly precise, allowing cells to filter through a flood of signals and make the correct choices that determine their function and survival\u2014whether that’s to grow, divide or perform a specific function.<\/p>\nFor example, stem cells use signals from the environment to become a specific cell type, like a nerve cell or skin cell.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision needs to be performed without a brain\u2014instead, cells rely on internal chemical reaction networks to compute the correct differentiation pathway,\u201d Floyd explained.<\/p>\n
The scientists said the knowledge could form the basis of new technologies, such as \u201csmart\u201d chemical processes.<\/p>\n
Overcoming the limit<\/p>\n
By training models of chemical reaction networks to perform classification tasks, the team discovered a \u00a0“thermodynamic\u201d constraint \u00a0that prevented certain networks from recognizing all but the simplest of patterns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The laws of thermodynamics are typically used to constrain the energy efficiency of engines, but here, researchers found a surprising new application. They discovered these laws also limit a biological system’s ability to compute\u2014a constraint directly linked to the energy the system can consume.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the team found this limitation could be overcome by increasing “input multiplicity,” a common feature in biological networks where a lone signal influences multiple parts of the network at once.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This suggests that the decision-making power of cells comes not from its size, but from this key factor. Floyd explained this further suggests naturally evolved circuits may have many interconnected components that allow for complex decision-making with fewer parts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This understanding of the network’s rules and limitations could lead to new technologies.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur work aims to understand the computational power of these chemical reaction-based \u2018computers\u2019 and identify the features that enable them to perform more complex functions,\u201d said Floyd.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cSince we can now in principle train chemical reaction networks to perform complex classification tasks, we can imagine making \u2018smart\u2019 chemical processes.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
These human-designed, \u201csmart\u201d networks could be embedded in biological environments to sense and respond to signals for applications such as medical diagnostics.<\/p>\n
The research was supported by the Physics Frontier Center for Living Systems and used the resources of the UChicago Research Computing Center.<\/p>\n
Citation: \u00a0Floyd, C., Dinner, A. R., Murugan, A., & Vaikuntanathan, S.\u00a0Limits on the computational expressivity of non-equilibrium biophysical processes.<\/a> Nature Communications, Aug. 5, 2025.<\/p>\n\u200cFunding: National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, UChicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our bodies\u2019 computational power doesn\u2019t just reside in the brain. Inside every living cell, a silent, intricate form…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[191,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-114984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}