MODULAR NETWORKS

Topological and functional modularity in biological regulatory networks

Coordinatore	UNIVERSITAET ZUERICH    more  Organization address address: Raemistrasse 71 city: ZURICH postcode: 8006 contact info Titolo: Prof. Nome: Andreas Cognome: Wagner Email: send email Telefono: +41 44 63 56141
Nazionalità Coordinatore	Switzerland [CH]
Totale costo	171˙132 €
EC contributo	171˙132 €
Programma	FP7-PEOPLE Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)
Code Call	FP7-PEOPLE-2007-4-2-IIF
Funding Scheme	MC-IIF
Anno di inizio	2008
Periodo (anno-mese-giorno)	2008-07-01   -   2010-06-30

 Partecipanti

#	participant	country	role	EC contrib. [€]
1	UNIVERSITAET ZUERICH  Organization address address: Raemistrasse 71 city: ZURICH postcode: 8006 contact info Titolo: Prof. Nome: Andreas Cognome: Wagner Email: send email Telefono: +41 44 63 56141	CH (ZURICH)	coordinator	0.00

Mappa

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Most functions and structures in living organisms seem to depend on subsets of elements organized as modules. In a modular system a certain process, performed by a module, does not depend heavily on the elements outside the module, and hence it is semi-autonomous. Modularity promotes evolvability, an organism’s capacity to generate heritable phenotypic variation, because it permits adjustment of a module without perturbing other functions and allows the combination of previously evolved functions. Understanding modularity is critical for the study of evolution and development of phenotypic traits. As several biological regulatory systems can be represented as directed networks, it would be useful to study these representations of biological systems to search for network traits that could underlie modules, and to test under which evolutionary scenarios these traits may appear. Modularity in networks has been addressed by looking for densely connected groups of nodes with sparser connections between groups. This is appropriate for undirected networks, but with directed networks a dense connectivity in a group of nodes does not suffice for semi-autonomous behavior. Feedback loops and strongly connected components (SCC) might be related to the behavior expected for a module, and thus, be considered structural signatures of modules. If this is the case, we would find more of these structures in regulatory (modular) networks than expected by chance. The first objective of this project is to test if the perceived abundance of loops and SCCs in regulatory networks is statistically significant. No study has addressed the appearance of loops and SCCs in directed networks and its relationship to modularity under realistic evolutionary scenarios. In this project several evolutionary scenarios for the evolution of modularity in directed networks will be tested, avoiding most limitations in previous attempts.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Many scientists think that the functions and structures in our bodies behave like modules, each a separate unit that can be linked to one another. This arrangement has significance in the way humans have evolved and may be able to explain how complex we have become.