Relative stability of network states in Boolean network models of gene regulation in development.

ABSTRACT: Progress in cell type reprogramming has revived the interest in Waddington's concept of the epigenetic landscape. Recently researchers developed the quasi-potential theory to represent the Waddington's landscape. The Quasi-potential U(x), derived from interactions in the gene regulatory network (GRN) of a cell, quantifies the relative stability of network states, which determine the effort required for state transitions in a multi-stable dynamical system. However, quasi-potential landscapes, originally developed for continuous systems, are not suitable for discrete-valued networks which are important tools to study complex systems. In this paper, we provide a framework to quantify the landscape for discrete Boolean networks (BNs). We apply our framework to study pancreas cell differentiati

SUBMITTER: Zhou JX 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5149109 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr-May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature