Comparison of Enzymatic Regulatory Network Topologies

One goal of systems biology is to study the relationship between biological properties and network topologies, and find what small network modules are essential to achieve these properties, which are called motifs. Based on the enzymatic regulatory network, this paper compares performances of a class of three-node, four-node and five-node regulatory networks on two important biological properties: oscillation and adaptation. We discover a specific five-node symmetric coupling network with the most significant periodicity and strongest adaptation: (1) The number of parameters sets for this topology to induce intrinsic oscillation are largest, and its ranges of amplitude distribution and period distribution are widest, which mean its amplitude and period can be adjusted by tuning parameters more easily. (2) This specific five-node network topology exhibits the best adaptation performance (the average precision is higher than all other networks that we consider) under both cases of fixed points and oscillation.