title: Boolean Models of Biological Processes Explain Cascade-Like Behavior.
abstract: Biological networks play a key role in determining biological function and therefore, an understanding of their structure and dynamics is of central interest in systems biology. In Boolean models of such networks, the status of each molecule is either "on" or "off" and along with the molecules interact with each other, their individual status changes from "on" to "off" or vice-versa and the system of molecules in the network collectively go through a sequence of changes in state. This sequence of changes is termed a biological process. In this paper, we examine the common perception that events in biomolecular networks occur sequentially, in a cascade-like manner, and ask whether this is likely to be an inherent property. In further investigations of the budding and fission yeast cell-cycle, we identify two generic dynamical rules. A Boolean system that complies with these rules will automatically have a certain robustness. By considering the biological requirements in robustness and designability, we show that those Boolean dynamical systems, compared to an arbitrary dynamical system, statistically present the characteristics of cascadeness and sequentiality, as observed in the budding and fission yeast cell- cycle. These results suggest that cascade-like behavior might be an intrinsic property of biological processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.|Department of Chemistry, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan 430023, China.
authors.forename: Hao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.|Department of Biology, South University of Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Guanyu
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
authors.forename: Rahul
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Simha
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
authors.forename: Chenghang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.|Department of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D002453:Cell Cycle / Q000235:genetics*; D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012568:Schizosaccharomyces / Q000235:genetics*; D049490:Systems Biology
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