Form and function in gene regulatory networks: the structure of network motifs determines fundamental properties of their dynamical state space.

ABSTRACT: Network motifs have been studied extensively over the past decade, and certain motifs, such as the feed-forward loop, play an important role in regulatory networks. Recent studies have used Boolean network motifs to explore the link between form and function in gene regulatory networks and have found that the structure of a motif does not strongly determine its function, if this is defined in terms of the gene expression patterns the motif can produce. Here, we offer a different, higher-level definition of the 'function' of a motif, in terms of two fundamental properties of its dynamical state space as a Boolean network. One is the basin entropy, which is a complexity measure of the dynamics of Boolean networks. The other is the diversity of cyclic attractor lengths that a given motif can

SUBMITTER: Ahnert SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4971217 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature