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Bioinformatics Advance Access published online on January 30, 2008
Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn041
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Biological pathway kinetic rate constants are scale-invariant

Scott Grandison and Richard J. Morris *

Department of Computational & Systems Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park,Colney Lane, NR4 7UH Norwich, UK.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Dr. Richard J. Morris, E-mail: Richard.Morris{at}bbsrc.ac.uk


  Abstract

Motivation: Scale-free networks have had a profound impact in Biology. Network theory is now used routinely to visualise, navigate through, and help understand gene networks, proteinprotein interactions, regulatory networks and metabolic pathways. Here we analyse the numerical rather than topological properties of biological networks and focus on the study of kinetic rate constants within pathways.

Results: We have analysed all current entries in the BioModels database and show that the kinetic rate parameters follow Benford's law closely. The cumulative histogram plot reveals an underlying power-law. This implies that these data are scale-invariant, thus placing biological network topology and their chemistry on an equivalent "scale-free" power-law foundation.

Contact: Richard.Morris{at}bbsrc.ac.uk.

Associate Editor: Prof. Martin Bishop

Received on October 3, 2007; revised on January 24, 2008; accepted on January 25, 2008

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