Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 30: Poster II

DY 30.13: Poster

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 16:00–18:00, Poster D

Evolution of Canalizing Boolean Networks — •Agnes Szejka and Barbara Drossel — Institut für Festkörperphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Deutschland

Canalizing Boolean networks are used to model gene regulatory networks. To get insight into how evolutionary forces may shape such structures, we simulate the evolution of a canalizing Boolean network by means of an adaptive walk. The mutations considered concern the functions and the connections of the nodes. The fitness criterion is robustness against small perturbations. As the adaptive walk leads to a local maximum in the fitness landscape it can deliver insight into the fitness landscape of a system. We find that all networks always reach maximum fitness and that there is a huge neutral plateau at this value that allows for further evolution. The evolved networks, although robust, show many properties characteristic for chaotic networks.