title: Generic Properties of Random Gene Regulatory 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.
authors.affiliation: Center for Quantitative Biology, School of Physics and Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China ; Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158, USA.
authors.forename: Zhiyuan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158, USA.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bianco
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100871, China.
authors.forename: Zhaoyang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Center for Quantitative Biology, School of Physics and Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tang
keywords: Genetic network; complex systems; dynamic attractors