Information Dynamics of a Nonlinear Stochastic Nanopore System

Entropy (Basel). 2018 Mar 23;20(4):221. doi: 10.3390/e20040221.

Abstract

Nanopores have become a subject of interest in the scientific community due to their potential uses in nanometer-scale laboratory and research applications, including infectious disease diagnostics and DNA sequencing. Additionally, they display behavioral similarity to molecular and cellular scale physiological processes. Recent advances in information theory have made it possible to probe the information dynamics of nonlinear stochastic dynamical systems, such as autonomously fluctuating nanopore systems, which has enhanced our understanding of the physical systems they model. We present the results of local (LER) and specific entropy rate (SER) computations from a simulation study of an autonomously fluctuating nanopore system. We learn that both metrics show increases that correspond to fluctuations in the nanopore current, indicating fundamental changes in information generation surrounding these fluctuations.

Keywords: entropy; information dynamics; k-nearest neighbor estimation; local entropy rate; nanopore; specific entropy rate.