Figure 1: T-cell survival signalling network and its attractor network.
From: A geometrical approach to control and controllability of nonlinear dynamical networks
(a) Structure of T-cell survival network: each node is labelled with its generic name, and the arrowhead and diamond-head edges represent activation and inhibition regulations, respectively. The inhibitory edges from ‘Apoptosis’ to other nodes are not shown (for clarity). (b) Attractor network of the T-cell network, which contains three nodes: two cancerous states denoted as C1 and C2 and a normal state denoted as N. The two directed edges in the attractor network are multiple, each containing altogether 48 individual edges corresponding to controlling the 48 edges in the original network, which are indicated by the dark dashed lines, whereas the remaining edges in the original network are signified by the light solid lines. Our detailed computations reveal that parameter perturbation on any one of the 48 edges can drive the system from a cancerous state to the normal state. That is, regardless of whether the initial state is C1 or C2, with a proper modification to one of the 48 parameters, the system can be driven to the normal state N.
