title: Dynamics and robustness of the cardiac progenitor cell induced pluripotent stem cell network during cell phenotypes transition.
abstract: Robustness is a fundamental characteristic of biological systems since all living systems need to adapt to internal or external perturbations, unpredictable environments, stochastic events and unreliable components, and so on. A long-term challenge in systems biology is to reveal the origin of robustness underlying molecular regulator network. In this study, a simple Boolean model is used to investigate the global dynamic properties and robustness of cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) induced pluripotent stem cell network that governs reprogramming and directed differentiation process. It is demonstrated that two major attractors correspond to source and target cell phenotypes, respectively, and two dominating attracting trajectories characterise the biological pathways between two major cell phenotypes. In particular, the experimentally observed transition between different cell phenotypes can be reproduced and explained theoretically. Furthermore, the robustness of major attractors and trajectories is largely maintained with respect to small perturbations to the network. Taken together, the CPC-induced pluripotent stem cell network is extremely robustly designed for their functions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yuangen
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Chengzhang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Haiyou
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Quan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gui
authors.affiliation: School of Teachers' Education, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Tianquan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China. yiming@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yi
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000502:physiology*; D065150:Cellular Reprogramming / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D057026:Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D010641:Phenotype