Noise-induced cooperative behavior in a multicell system

All cell components exhibit intracellular noise on account of random births and deaths of individual molecules, and extracellular noise because of environment perturbations. Gene regulation in particular, is an inherently noisy process with transcriptional control, alternative splicing, translation, diffusion and chemical modification reactions, all of which involve stochastic fluctuations. Such stochastic noises may not only affect the dynamics of the entire system but may also be exploited by living organisms to actively facilitate certain functions, such as cooperative behavior and communication.