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The basis of easy controllability in Boolean networks.
Enrico Borriello1, Bryan C Daniels2
1School of Complex Adaptive Systems, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. enrico.borriello@asu.edu.
Nature Communications
|September 2, 2021
Summary
Controlling biological systems is often simple, requiring minimal variable manipulation. Research shows biological networks are typically easy to control, with few nodes needing adjustment even in large systems.
Area of Science:
- Systems biology
- Computational biology
- Network science
Background:
- Biological systems exhibit complex dynamics.
- Effective control of these systems is crucial for research and applications.
- Boolean dynamical networks offer a framework for analyzing system control.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the effectiveness of external control in biological systems.
- To investigate how the number of nodes to control scales with system complexity.
- To understand the theoretical basis for control in biological networks.
Main Methods:
- Formalism of Boolean dynamical networks.
- Analysis of 49 existing biological network models.
- Numerical simulations to assess control strategies.
Main Results:
- The number of nodes requiring external control scales logarithmically with the number of attractors.
- Biological networks appear to be generally easy to control.
- Identification of three types of controlling nodes: inputs, attractor discriminators, and others.
Conclusions:
- Biological networks may be inherently controllable due to logarithmic scaling principles.
- The study provides a theoretical framework for understanding biological system control.
- Identified factors that can affect the scalability of control in these networks.
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