Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 30: Poster - Complex nonlinear systems

DY 30.7: Poster

Dienstag, 8. März 2016, 18:15–21:00, Poster C

Evolution of a population of Boolean threshold networks for a targeted expression pattern — •Isabella-Hilda Bodea, Lara Becker, and Barbara Drossel — TU Darmstadt, Germany

We study the evolution of a population of Boolean threshold networks under selection for dynamical robustness of a predefined expression pattern to noise.

Random Boolean networks were introduced in 1969 by S. Kauffman as a simple model for gene regulatory networks. The nodes of these networks represent genes that can only be in two different states, “on” (expressed) or “off” (not expressed). In spite of their simplicity, Boolean models are able to reproduce the essential dynamical steps of real developmental processes, where the network switches from one expression pattern to another one. Such switching processes must function reliably in the presence of mutations and dynamical noise.

In order to investigate the evolution of such gene regulatory networks in the presence of noise, we introduce stochasticity by perturbing the states of randomly chosen nodes. The evolutionary process proceeds with discrete generations, where the fitter part of the population become the parents of the next generation. While mutations act on the genotype, i.e. the connections between the nodes and the update functions, selection is based on the phenotype, i.e. the dynamical behaviour of a network. We investigate the mutational and dynamical robustness of the population as a function of time for different noise levels and mutation rates, as well as the dynamical properties of the evolved networks.