Biological pathway kinetic rate constants are scale-invariant

Area of Science:

• Systems Biology
• Biophysics
• Network Science

Background:

• Scale-free networks are crucial in understanding biological systems like gene networks and metabolic pathways.
• Network theory is widely applied to visualize and analyze biological interactions.
• This study shifts focus from topological to numerical properties of biological networks, specifically kinetic rate constants.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the numerical properties of kinetic rate constants in biological pathways.
• To investigate if these numerical properties exhibit scale-invariance.
• To establish a potential link between biological network topology and chemistry through power-law distributions.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of all entries in the BioModels database.
• Examination of kinetic rate parameters within biological pathways.
• Statistical analysis to identify adherence to Benford's Law and power-law distributions.

Main Results:

• Kinetic rate parameters in biological networks closely follow Benford's Law.
• A cumulative histogram revealed an underlying power-law distribution for these parameters.
• The findings indicate that kinetic data in biological networks are scale-invariant.

Conclusions:

• Biological network chemistry, specifically kinetic rate constants, exhibits scale-invariance.
• This scale-invariance provides a power-law foundation, analogous to network topology.
• The study unifies network topology and chemistry under a common scale-free principle.