Berlin 2008 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help

DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 29: Poster II

DY 29.34: Poster

Thursday, February 28, 2008, 16:00–18:00, Poster C

Evolution of Boolean networks under selection for a certain attractor — •Christoph Jan Hamer and Barbara Drossel — Institut für Festkörperphysik, TU Darmstadt, Hochschulstraße 6, 64289 Darmstadt

Gene regulation networks are shaped by their evolutionary history. In several cases, it has been shown that a Boolean model captures correctly the essential dynamics of a gene regulation network. The best known and most investigated example is the network regulating the cell cycle of budding yeast, which has been successfully modeled as a Boolean threshold network. This model network has a fixed point that can be reached from most starting points in state space, and the approach to this fixed point during the cell cycle follows a trajectory that is stable against perturbations. We address in this poster the question whether this trajectory can be obtained in other networks with the same number of nodes. We search for such networks by an evolutionary process. We first create random networks and successively select for mutant networks the dynamics of which reproduces correctly more and more steps of the desired trajectory.