Jin Yaochu, Meng Yan
University of Surrey, Department of Computing, FEPS, Guildford, Surrey, UK.
Biosystems. 2011 Jan;103(1):38-44. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2010.09.009. Epub 2010 Oct 12.
The relationship between robustness and evolvability (easiness to evolve), and the evolutionary emergence of robust genetic circuits in biology have attracted much attention in systems biology. This paper investigates in silico the influence of the cis-regulation logic and the coupling of feedback loops on the evolvability and robustness of gene regulatory motifs that can generate sustained oscillation. Our simulation results indicate that both evolvability and robustness of the considered regulatory motifs depend on the cis-regulation logic and the way in which positive and negative feedback loops are coupled. Most interestingly, our findings suggest that robust regulatory motifs can emerge from evolution without an explicit selection pressure on robustness and adding noise in the parameters during the evolution is likely to promote the evolution of sustained oscillation.
鲁棒性与可进化性（易于进化）之间的关系，以及生物学中鲁棒遗传回路的进化出现，在系统生物学中备受关注。本文通过计算机模拟研究了顺式调控逻辑和反馈回路耦合对能够产生持续振荡的基因调控基序的可进化性和鲁棒性的影响。我们的模拟结果表明，所考虑的调控基序的可进化性和鲁棒性均取决于顺式调控逻辑以及正负反馈回路的耦合方式。最有趣的是，我们的研究结果表明，鲁棒调控基序可以在没有对鲁棒性进行明确选择压力的情况下从进化中出现，并且在进化过程中向参数中添加噪声可能会促进持续振荡的进化。
