Superfamilies of Evolved and Designed Networks

doi:10.1126/science.1089167

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Superfamilies of Evolved and Designed Networks

Ron Milo, Shalev Itzkovitz, Nadav Kashtan, Reuven Levitt, Shai Shen-Orr, Inbal Ayzenshtat, Michal Sheffer, Uri Alon^*

Complex biological, technological, and sociological networkscan be of very different sizes and connectivities, making itdifficult to compare their structures. Here we present an approachto systematically study similarity in the local structure ofnetworks, based on the significance profile (SP) of small subgraphsin the network compared to randomized networks. We find severalsuperfamilies of previously unrelated networks with very similarSPs. One superfamily, including transcription networks of microorganisms,represents "rate-limited" information-processing networks stronglyconstrained by the response time of their components. A distinctsuperfamily includes protein signaling, developmental geneticnetworks, and neuronal wiring. Additional superfamilies includepower grids, protein-structure networks and geometric networks,World Wide Web links and social networks, and word-adjacencynetworks from different languages.

Departments of Molecular Cell Biology, Physics of Complex Systems, and Computer Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel. E-mail: urialon{at}weizmann.ac.il

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TECHNICAL COMMENTS Comment on "Network Motifs: Simple Building Blocks of Complex Networks" and "Superfamilies of Evolved and Designed Networks": Yael Artzy-Randrup, Sarel J. Fleishman, Nir Ben-Tal, and Lewi Stone (20 August 2004)
Science 305 (5687), 1107c. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1099334]
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TECHNICAL COMMENTS Response to Comment on "Network Motifs: Simple Building Blocks of Complex Networks" and "Superfamilies of Evolved and Designed Networks": Ron Milo, Shalev Itzkovitz, Nadav Kashtan, Reuven Levitt, and Uri Alon (20 August 2004)
Science 305 (5687), 1107d. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1100519]
| Full Text » | PDF »