The intricate dynamics of ultrasensitive transitions within mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade

circuits regulate the diverse physiological activities in a living organism emphasizing their pivotal role

in cellular signal transduction. We have shown that the generic features of ultrasensitive transition often

characterized through critical slowing down, however, one can have a theoretical estimate of such catastrophic

transition using a stochastic response function, called early warning signals (EWS). EWS is composed of slowing

down of decay of correlation and divergence of fluctuation phenomenon under very low perturbation. It is

shown that the ultrasensitive transition arises depending on the trade off between the cycle number and

essential activation parameter. Therefore, the transition point is kinetically optimized by these two parameters

so that a high activation energy is surmounted through multiple steps and here we have shown that EWS as stochastic response functions can capture this optimization most effectively.  Know More