How divergence mechanisms influence disassortative mixing property in biology

Abstract

The duplication–divergence mechanism of network growth has been widely investigated, especially in gene and protein networks. Both the duplication and divergence have a key role in biological network evolution. However, the relative roles of these mechanisms in the influence of disassortative property in protein interaction networks remain to be clarified. It has been shown that duplication can indeed make protein networks evolve towards disassortative networks. To make the relationship between the disassortative property and the duplication–divergence mechanism more clear, we further discuss how the divergence mechanism influences the disassortative property. We tested four different divergence mechanisms, i.e., node deletion, edge deletion, edge addition, and edge rewiring to study their effects on disassortative property. Our study highlights the crucial roles of different divergence evolution mechanisms.