Robustness of Boolean networks to update modes: an application to hereditary angioedema

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different update modes affect the robustness of Boolean networks modeling hereditary angioedema, focusing on structural stability and instability under various gene activation update schemes.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of a specific gene interaction graph's robustness to various update modes, highlighting the impact of update schemes on network stability.

Findings

The graph exhibits different stability properties depending on the update mode.

Alternating block-parallel updates reveal intricate activation patterns.

Classical periodic update modes influence the network's robustness.

Abstract

Many familial diseases are caused by genetic accidents, which affect both the genome and its epigenetic environment, expressed as an interaction graph between the genes as that involved in one familial disease we shall study, the hereditary angioedema. The update of the gene states at the vertices of this graph (1 if a gene is activated, 0 if it is inhibited) can be done in multiple ways, well studied over the last two decades: Parallel, sequential, block-sequential, block-parallel, random, etc. We will study a particular graph, related to the familial disease proposed as an example, which has subgraphs which activate in an intricate manner (\emph{i.e.}, in an alternating block-parallel mode, with one core constantly updated and two complementary subsets of genes alternating their updating), of which we will study the structural aspects, robust or unstable, in relation to some classical periodic update modes.