The Blind Watchmaker Network: Scale-freeness and Evolution
Petter Minnhagen, Sebastian Bernhardsson

TL;DR
This paper shows that cellular metabolic networks have a power-law degree distribution similar to random networks, suggesting evolution may preserve inherent randomness rather than specific structures, challenging traditional views on network development.
Contribution
It introduces the concept of the 'blind watchmaker' network, demonstrating that metabolic networks are statistically indistinguishable from random networks with scale-free properties, without assuming growth mechanisms.
Findings
Metabolic networks follow a power-law degree distribution with gamma >= 2.
Random networks can exhibit scale-free degree distributions similar to biological networks.
Evolutionary pathways may preserve inherent randomness rather than specific network structures.
Abstract
It is suggested that the degree distribution for networks of the cell-metabolism for simple organisms reflects an ubiquitous randomness. This implies that natural selection has exerted no or very little pressure on the network degree distribution during evolution. The corresponding random network, here termed the blind watchmaker network has a power-law degree distribution with an exponent gamma >= 2. It is random with respect to a complete set of network states characterized by a description of which links are attached to a node as well as a time-ordering of these links. No a priory assumption of any growth mechanism or evolution process is made. It is found that the degree distribution of the blind watchmaker network agrees very precisely with that of the metabolic networks. This implies that the evolutionary pathway of the cell-metabolism, when projected onto a metabolic network…
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