The impact of sources and sinks on the dynamics of homogeneous and heterogeneous boolean networks

Abstract

Random Boolean networks, originally introduced as simplified models for the genetic regulatory networks, are abstract models widely applied for the study of the dynamical behaviors of self-organizing complex systems. In these networks, connectivity and the bias of the Boolean functions are the most important factors that can determine the behavioral regime of the systems. On the other hand, it has been found that topology and some structural elements of the networks such as the reciprocity, self-loops and source nodes, can have relevant effects on the dynamical properties of critical Boolean networks. In this paper, we study the impact of source and sink nodes on the dynamics of homogeneous and heterogeneous Boolean networks. Our research shows that an increase of the source nodes causes an exponentially growing of the different behaviors that the system can exhibit regardless of the network topology, while the amount of order seems to undergo modifications depending on the topology of the system. Indeed, with the increase of the source nodes the orderliness of the heterogeneous networks also increases, whereas it diminishes in the homogeneous ones. On the other hand, although the sink nodes seem not to have effects on the dynamic of the homogeneous networks, for the heterogeneous ones we have found that an increase of the sinks gives rise to an increasing of the order, although the different potential behaviors of the system remains approximately the same.