Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
Bioessays. 2010 Jun;32(6):505-13. doi: 10.1002/bies.200900169.
The identification of network motifs has been widely considered as a significant step towards uncovering the design principles of biomolecular regulatory networks. To date, time-invariant networks have been considered. However, such approaches cannot be used to reveal time-specific biological traits due to the dynamic nature of biological systems, and hence may not be applicable to development, where temporal regulation of gene expression is an indispensable characteristic. We propose a concept of a "temporal sequence of network motifs", a sequence of network motifs in active sub-networks constructed over time, and investigate significant network motifs in the active temporal sub-networks of Drosophila melanogaster. Based on this concept, we find a temporal sequence of network motifs which changes according to developmental stages and thereby cannot be identified from the whole static network. Moreover, we show that the temporal sequence of network motifs corresponding to each developmental stage can be used to describe pivotal developmental events.
网络基元的识别被广泛认为是揭示生物分子调控网络设计原则的重要步骤。迄今为止，人们一直考虑的是时不变网络。然而，由于生物系统的动态性质，这种方法不能用于揭示特定时间的生物学特征，因此可能不适用于发育过程，在发育过程中，基因表达的时间调节是必不可少的特征。我们提出了“网络基元的时间序列”的概念，即随着时间构建的活性子网络中的网络基元序列，并研究了果蝇中活性时间子网络中的显著网络基元。基于这个概念，我们发现了一个随发育阶段而变化的网络基元的时间序列，因此不能从整个静态网络中识别出来。此外，我们还表明，对应于每个发育阶段的网络基元的时间序列可以用于描述关键的发育事件。
