Biological network design strategies: discovery through dynamic optimization
Abstract
An important challenge in systems biology is the inherent complexity of biological network models, which complicates the task of relating network structure to function and of understanding the conceptual design principles by which a given network operates. Here we investigate an approach to analyze the relationship between a network structure and its function using the framework of optimization. A common feature found in a variety of biochemical networks involves the opposition of a pair of enzymatic chemical modification reactions such as phosphorylation–dephosphorylation or methylation–