Boolean networks as toy models for robustness and reliability in gene regulation networks

Regulatory networks in biological organisms have to operate reliably, yet are built from highly unreliable components. What are the conditions and mechanism that allow living systems to evolve reliable circuits from unreliable elements? I will review different aspects of robustness and reliability in living cells and then present a framework of simple toy models to explore basic mechanisms for robustness in dynamical networks. Finally, application of these highly simplified dynamical models to yeast cell cycle control networks are discussed.

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