The Topological Characteristics of Biological Ratio-Sensing Networks

Overview

Journal Life (Basel)

Specialty Biology

Date 2023 Feb 25

PMID 36836707

Authors

Xinmao Chen

Tianze Wang

Ying Guan

Qi Ouyang

Chunbo Lou

Long Qian

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Ratio sensing is a fundamental biological function observed in signal transduction and decision making. In the synthetic biology context, ratio sensing presents one of the elementary functions for cellular multi-signal computation. To investigate the mechanism of the ratio-sensing behavior, we explored the topological characteristics of biological ratio-sensing networks. With exhaustive enumeration of three-node enzymatic and transcriptional regulatory networks, we found that robust ratio sensing was highly dependent on network structure rather than network complexity. Specifically, a set of seven minimal core topological structures and four motifs were deduced to be capable of robust ratio sensing. Further investigations on the evolutionary space of robust ratio-sensing networks revealed highly clustered domains surrounding the core motifs which suggested their evolutionary plausibility. Our study revealed the network topological design principles of ratio-sensing behavior and provided a design scheme for constructing regulatory circuits with ratio-sensing behavior in synthetic biology.

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