Dynamical approaches to modeling developmental gene regulatory networks

Abstract

The network of interacting regulatory signals within a cell comprises one of the most complex and powerful computational systems in biology. Gene regulatory networks play a key role in transforming the information encoded in a genome into morphological form. To achieve this feat, gene regulatory networks must respond to and integrate environmental signals with their internal dynamics in a robust and coordinated fashion. The highly dynamic nature of this process lends itself to interpretation and analysis in the language of dynamical models. Modelling provides a means of systematically untangling the complicated structure of gene regulatory networks, a framework within which to simulate the behaviour of reconstructed systems and, in some cases, suites of analytic tools for exploring that behaviour and its implications. This review provides a general background to the idea of treating a regulatory network as a dynamical system, and describes a variety of different approaches that have been taken to the dynamical modelling of gene regulatory networks.

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