  Temperature sensing is a ubiquitous cell behavior, but the fundamental limits
to the precision of temperature sensing are poorly understood. Unlike in
chemical concentration sensing, the precision of temperature sensing is not
limited by extrinsic fluctuations in the temperature field itself. Instead, we
find that precision is limited by the intrinsic copy number, turnover, and
binding kinetics of temperature-sensitive proteins. Developing a model based on
the canonical TlpA protein, we find that a cell can estimate temperature to
within 2%. We compare this prediction with in vivo data on temperature sensing
in bacteria.
