identification of a topological characteristic responsible for the biological robustness of regulatory networks识别拓扑特征的生物鲁棒性负责监管网络.pdfVIP

Identification of a Topological Characteristic Responsible for the Biological Robustness of Regulatory Networks Yangle Wu1,2, Xiaomeng Zhang1,2, Jianglei Yu1,2, Qi Ouyang1,2,3* 1 Center for Theoretical Biology, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 2 The State Key Laboratory for Artificial Microstructures and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 3 Department of Physics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China Abstract Attribution of biological robustness to the specific structural properties of a regulatory network is an important yet unsolved problem in systems biology. It is widely believed that the topological characteristics of a biological control network largely determine its dynamic behavior, yet the actual mechanism is still poorly understood. Here, we define a novel structural feature of biological networks, termed ‘regulation entropy’, to quantitatively assess the influence of network topology on the robustness of the systems. Using the cell-cycle control networks of the budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and the fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) as examples, we first demonstrate the correlation of this quantity with the dynamic stability of biological control networks, and then we establish a significant association between this quantity and the structural stability of the networks. And we further substantiate the generality of this approach with a broad spectrum of biological and random networks. We conclude that the regulation entropy is an effective order parameter in evaluating the robustness of biological control networks. Our work suggests a novel connec