Cells That Talk in Molecules
Biology Might Be More Programmable Than We Think
A molecular communication system treats signaling molecules like message carriers. One cell releases them into the surrounding fluid, they wander and drift through space, and another cell reads the message by counting fresh binding events at its receptors.
Here, a 1 is sent as a burst of molecules during a symbol window, while a 0 is sent as silence. Before the real payload, we send a short pilot pulse so the receiver can calibrate the channel and line up its sampling time. Decoding is then based on new receptor-binding arrivals, passed through a matched filter, rather than just watching slow receptor occupancy. That makes the symbols cleaner to separate, even with noise, delay, and intersymbol interference in the medium.