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6 - Structural and dynamical properties of cellular and regulatory networks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2009

Muhammad H. Zaman
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

Introduction

Systems that can be mapped as networks are all around us. Recently, scientists have started to reconsider the traditional reductionism viewpoint that has driven science ever since. The accumulated evidence that systems as complex as a cell cannot be fully understood by studying only their isolated constituents, but that rather most biological characteristics and behaviors are related to complex interactions of many cellular constituents, has given rise to the birth of a new movement of interest and research in the study of complex networks, i.e., networks whose structure is irregular, complex, and dynamically evolving in time, with the main focus moving from the analysis of small networks to that of systems with thousands or millions of nodes, and with a renewed attention to the properties of networks of dynamical units. This flurry of activity has seen the physicists' and biologists' communities among the principal actors, and has been certainly induced by the increased computing powers and by the possibility to study the properties of a wealth of large databases of real networks. The regulatory and cellular networks that will be the subject of study in this chapter have been among the most studied networks, and the field has benefited from many important contributions. The expectancy is that understanding and modeling the structure of a regulatory network would lead to better comprehend its dynamical and functional behavior.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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