Broad edge of chaos in strongly heterogeneous Boolean networks

Abstract

The dynamic stability of the Boolean networks representing a model for the gene transcriptional regulation (Kauffman model) is studied by calculating analytically and numerically the Hamming distance between two evolving configurations. This turns out to behave in a universal way close to the phase boundary only for in-degree distributions with a finite second moment. In-degree distributions of the form $P_d(k)\sim k^{-\gamma }$ with $2<\gamma <3$, thus having a diverging second moment, lead to a slower increase of the Hamming distance when moving towards the unstable phase and to a broadening of the phase boundary for finite $N$ with decreasing $\gamma$. We conclude that the heterogeneous regulatory network connectivity facilitates the balancing between robustness and evolvability in living organisms.

8 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Critical Boolean networks with scale-free in-degree distribution
• Evolution of regulatory networks towards adaptability and stability in a changing environment
• Giant component in a configuration-model power-law graph with a variable number of links
• Dynamics of attractor transitions in Boolean networks under noise