Response to Comment on "Network Motifs: Simple Building Blocks of Complex Networks" and "Superfamilies of Evolved and Designed Networks"

Abstract

Our previous work (1) presented a phenomenological observation on real-world networks: They show distinct subgraph significance profiles (SP) when compared with randomized networks with the same degree sequence as the real networks. This observation calls for a theory—a model that prescribes evolutionary dynamics or constraints that, once used to evolve a network, yield the observed SPs. The SP method also provides a way to test whether a given theoretical model actually reproduces the local structure of the real network. Selection of network motifs for their function is one such possible theory, which, as we mention below, can and should be tested experimentally; it is certainly not the only possible theory (1, 2).