Networking genetic regulation and neural computation: Directed network topology and its effect on the dynamics

Two different types of directed networks are investigated, transcriptional regulation networks and neural networks. The directed network structure is studied and is also shown to reflect the different processes taking place on the networks. The distribution of influence, identified as the the number of downstream vertices, are used as a tool for investigating random vertex removal. In the transcriptional regulation networks we observe that only a small number of vertices have a large influence. The small influences of most vertices limit the effect of a random removal to, in most cases, only a small fraction of vertices in the network. The neural network has a rather different topology with respect to the influence, which are large for most vertices. To further investigate the effect of vertex removal we simulate the biological processes taking place on the networks. Opposed to the presumed large effect of random vertex removal in the neural network, the high density of edges in conjunction with the dynamics used makes the change in the state of the system to be highly localized around the removed vertex.