ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2018
Reusable building blocks in biological systems.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modeling combinatorial regulation from single-cell multi-omics provides regulatory units underpinning cell type landscape using cRegulon.Genome biology · 2025Article
- Why cellular computations challenge our design principles.Seminars in cell & developmental biology · 2025Review
- Open-endedness in synthetic biology: A route to continual innovation for biological design.Science advances · 2024Review
- Ongoing shuffling of protein fragments diversifies core viral functions linked to interactions with bacterial hosts.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Dynamical modules in metabolism, cell and developmental biology.Interface focus · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the most widely recognized features of biological systems is their modularity. The modules that constitute biological systems are said to be redeployed and combined across several conditions, thus acting as building blocks. In this work, we analyse to what extent are these building blocks reusable as compared with those found in randomized versions of a system. We develop a notion of decompositions of systems into phenotypic building blocks, which allows them to overlap while maximizing the number of times a building block is reused across several conditions. Different biological systems present building blocks whose reusability ranges from single use (e.g. condition specific) to constitutive, although their average reusability is not always higher than random equivalents of the system. These decompositions reveal a distinct distribution of building block sizes in real biological systems. This distribution stems, in part, from the peculiar usage pattern of the elements of biological systems, and constitutes a new angle to study the evolution of modularity.
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Registered trials
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