Total-Activity Conservation Analysis and Design of Boolean Networks.

Abstract

The law of conservation of mass, represented in Boolean networks (BNs) as total-activity conservation, is one of the typical properties of biological networks. This article analyzes the total-activity conservation of BNs based on the algebraic state-space representation (ASSR) approach. First, the total-activity-conservative matrix is defined and a matrix-based criterion is proposed to verify the total-activity conservation of BNs. Meanwhile, when function perturbation is considered, robust total-activity conservation is investigated. Second, by means of the pseudo-Boolean function generated by total-activity conservation, a constructive design procedure of the Boolean dynamics is given to achieve the total-activity conservation. Third, the total-activity conservation of switched Boolean networks (SBNs) under arbitrary switching signal is studied, which together with network aggregation achieves the total-activity conservation of large-scale BNs.