Poster #RP114
Self-similar tendency of metabolic networks:as in the case of bow-tie structure
Jing Zhao*, Hong Yu**, Jianhua Luo*, Zhiwei Cao**, Yixue Li**
*Department of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; **Shanghai Center for Bioinformation and Technology, Shanghai, China
The exploration of the structural topology and the organizing principles of genome-based metabolic networks is essential for studying possible relations between structure and functionality of metabolic networks. Topological analysis of graph models has often been applied to study the structural characteristics of complex metabolic networks. In this work, metabolic networks of 75 organisms were investigated from a topological point of view. Network decomposition of three microbes shows that almost all of the sub-networks are functionally related modules exhibiting a similar bow-tie topological pattern as that of the global metabolic networks. Moreover, these small bow-ties are hierarchically nested into larger ones and collectively integrated into a large metabolic network, which is not observed in random shuffled network. Such a bow-tie pattern appears to be present in certain chemically isolated functional modules and spatially separated modules including carbohydrate metabolism, cytosol and mitochondrion respectively. The results indicate that the bow-tie pattern is present at different levels and scales, and in different chemical and spatial modules of metabolic networks, which is likely the result of the evolutionary process rather than a random accident. Identification and analysis of such a pattern is helpful for understanding the design principles and facilitate the modelling of metabolic networks.