Signal Detection, Modularity, and the Correlation between Extrinsic and Intrinsic Noise in Biochemical Networks

We present an expression for the power spectrum of the output signal of a biochemical network, which reveals that the reactions that allow a network to detect biochemical signals, induce correlations between the extrinsic noise of the input signals and the intrinsic noise of the reactions that form the network. We show that anticorrelations between the extrinsic and intrinsic noise enhance the robustness of zero-order ultrasensitive networks to biochemical noise. We discuss the consequences for a modular description of noise transmission using the mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade.