Dynamical criticality in gene regulatory networks (Q1632896)

Summary: A well-known hypothesis, with far-reaching implications, is that biological evolution should preferentially lead to states that are dynamically critical. In previous papers, we showed that a well-known model of genetic regulatory networks, namely, that of random Boolean networks, allows one to study in depth the relationship between the dynamical regime of a living being's gene network and its response to permanent perturbations. In this paper, we analyze a huge set of new experimental data on single gene knockouts in \textit{S. cerevisiae}, laying down a statistical framework to determine its dynamical regime. We find that the \textit{S. cerevisiae} network appears to be slightly ordered, but close to the critical region. Since our analysis relies on dichotomizing continuous data, we carefully consider the issue of an optimal threshold choice.