Time-varying stimuli that prolong IKK activation promote nuclear remodeling and mechanistic switching of NF-κB dynamics
Temporal properties of molecules within signaling networks, such as sub-cellular changes in protein abundance, encode information that mediate cellular responses to stimuli. How dynamic signals relay and process information is a critical gap in understanding cellular behaviors. In this work, we investigate transmission of information about changing extracellular cytokine concentrations from receptor-level supramolecular assemblies of I{kappa}B kinases (IKK) downstream to the nuclear factor {kappa}B (NF-{kappa}B) transcription factor (TF). In a custom robot-controlled microfluidic cell culture, we simultaneously measure input-output (I/O) encoding of IKK-NF-{kappa}B in dual fluorescent-reporter cells. When compared with single cytokine pulses, dose-conserving pulse trains prolong IKK assemblies and lead to disproportionately enhanced retention of nuclear NF-{kappa}B. Using particle swarm optimization, we demonstrate that a mechanistic model does not recapitulate this emergent property. By contrast, invoking mechanisms for NF-{kappa}B-dependent chromatin remodeling to the model recapitulates experiments, showing how temporal dosing that prolongs IKK assemblies facilitates switching to permissive chromatin that sequesters nuclear NF-{kappa}B. Remarkably, using simulations to resolve single-cell receptor data accurately predicts same-cell NF-{kappa}B time courses for more than 80% of our single cell trajectories. Our data and simulations therefore suggest that cell-to-cell heterogeneity in cytokine responses are predominantly due to mechanisms at the level receptor-associated protein complexes.