title: An efficient approach of attractor calculation for large-scale Boolean gene regulatory networks.
abstract: Boolean network models provide an efficient way for studying gene regulatory networks. The main dynamics of a Boolean network is determined by its attractors. Attractor calculation plays a key role for analyzing Boolean gene regulatory networks. An approach of attractor calculation was proposed in this study, which improved the predecessor-based approach. Furthermore, the proposed approach combined with the identification of constant nodes and simplified Boolean networks to accelerate attractor calculation. The proposed algorithm is effective to calculate all attractors for large-scale Boolean gene regulatory networks. If the average degree of the network is not too large, the algorithm can get all attractors of a Boolean network with dozens or even hundreds of nodes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Taizhou University, Linhai, Zhejiang 317000, China. Electronic address: heqinbin@126.com.
authors.forename: Qinbin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Taizhou University, Linhai, Zhejiang 317000, China. Electronic address: zhilexia@163.com.
authors.forename: Zhile
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Taizhou University, Linhai, Zhejiang 317000, China. Electronic address: tzlinblin@163.com.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic
keywords: Attractor; Boolean networks; Genetic regulatory networks