English

Law of localization in chemical reaction networks

Molecular Networks 2016-08-24 v2 Dynamical Systems Biological Physics Subcellular Processes

Abstract

In living cells, chemical reactions are connected by sharing their products and substrates, and form complex networks, e.g. metabolic pathways. Here we developed a theory to predict the sensitivity, i.e. the responses of concentrations and fluxes to perturbations of enzymes, from network structure alone. Responses turn out to exhibit two characteristic patterns, localizationlocalization and hierarchyhierarchy. We present a general theorem connecting sensitivity with network topology that explains these characteristic patterns. Our results imply that network topology is an origin of biological robustness. Finally, we suggest a strategy to determine real networks from experimental measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.08607,
  title  = {Law of localization in chemical reaction networks},
  author = {Takashi Okada and Atsushi Mochizuki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.08607},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

18 pages 5 figures; v2: minor corrections (accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters)