Regulatory motifs: structural and functional building blocks of genetic computation

2022/08/31 by Thomas Fink, Fink, Thomas M. A.
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Algorithms and Applications #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Gene Regulatory Network Analysis #Molecular Networks (q-bio.MN) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2208.14996

openalex publication_date 2022/08/31 · openalex created_date 2023/02/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Developing and maintaining life requires a lot of computation. This is done by gene regulatory networks. But we have little understanding of how this computation is organized. I show that there is a direct correspondence between the structural and functional building blocks of regulatory networks, which I call regulatory motifs. I derive a simple bound on the range of function that these motifs can perform, in terms of the local network structure. I prove that this range is a small fraction of all possible functions, which severely constrains global network behavior. Part of this restriction is due to redundancy in the function that regulatory motifs can achieve - there are many ways to perform the same task. Regulatory motifs help us understanding how genetic computation is organized and what it can achieve.

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