Generic Properties of Random Gene Regulatory Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the generic dynamical behaviors of random gene regulatory networks, revealing how network topology influences attractor types and identifying core motifs that govern stability and dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of how topological features affect the dynamics of GRNs and identifies small motifs that determine network stability.

Findings

Attractor types vary with network parameters

Stability is governed by small embedding motifs

Insights aid in designing genetic networks

Abstract

Modeling gene regulatory networks (GRNs) is an important topic in systems biology. Although there has been much work focusing on various specific systems, the generic behavior of GRNs with continuous variables is still elusive. In particular, it is not clear typically how attractors partition among the three types of orbits: steady state, periodic and chaotic, and how the dynamical properties change with network's topological characteristics. In this work, we first investigated these questions in random GRNs with different network sizes, connectivity, fraction of inhibitory links and transcription regulation rules. Then we searched for the core motifs that govern the dynamic behavior of large GRNs. We show that the stability of a random GRN is typically governed by a few embedding motifs of small sizes, and therefore can in general be understood in the context of these short motifs. Our results provide insights for the study and design of genetic networks.