Emergence of switch-like behavior in a large family of simple biochemical networks.

ABSTRACT: Bistability plays a central role in the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) controlling many essential biological functions, including cellular differentiation and cell cycle control. However, establishing the network topologies that can exhibit bistability remains a challenge, in part due to the exceedingly large variety of GRNs that exist for even a small number of components. We begin to address this problem by employing chemical reaction network theory in a comprehensive in silico survey to determine the capacity for bistability of more than 40,000 simple networks that can be formed by two transcription factor-coding genes and their associated proteins (assuming only the most elementary biochemical processes). We find that there exist reaction rate constants leading to bistability in ∼90%

SUBMITTER: Siegal-Gaskins D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3093349 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature