International audienceIf we consider the regulatory networks used in systems biology (especially in neural and genetic networks), we observe certain regularities in their architecture, namely the occurrence of interaction motifs, i.e. of oriented sub-graphs relating their elements with the same interaction scheme. We propose here to describe some of these motifs we can consider as universal because they are often met in the regulatory networks architecture, and to study their main robustness properties (called also structural stability), i.e. their ability to keep after topological or dynamical perturbations, their essential asymptotic features, as their attractors number, shape and behaviour, like their periodicity

The biological regulatory networks present common features because they have evolved until obtaining robust architecture of interactions, able to resist to perturbations like changes in boundary conditions like those induced by microRNAs or in updating rules deciding what genes are co-expressed. We present here some examples of these types of robustness by successively studying the boundary and updating influence on the core genes expression in morphogenesis regulatory networks controlling i) cell cycle in mammals, ii) feathers morphogenesis & iii) gastrulation in chicken, and iv) dorso-ventral stripes patterning in Drosophila.

No abstract