Signal amplification in biological and electrical engineering systems Universal role of cascades

In this paper we compare the cascade mechanisms of signal amplification in biological and electrical engineering systems, and show that they share the capacity to considerably amplify signals, and respond to signal changes both quickly and completely, which effectively preserves the form of the input signal. For biological systems, these characteristics are crucial for efficient and reliable cellular signaling. We show that this highly-efficient biological mechanism of signal amplification that has naturally evolved is mathematically fully equivalent with some man-developed amplifiers, which indicates parallels between biological evolution and successful technology development. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.