Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41998018›Full record

ArticleNPJ systems biology and applications2026

Succession-diagram-based Markov chains reveal the attractor landscape of asynchronous Boolean networks.

Kyu Hyong Park, Réka Albert

Abstract read
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Article in NPJ systems biology and applications, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Kyu Hyong ParkDepartment of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
Réka AlbertDepartment of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. rza1@psu.edu.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of Boolean models of biological systems is hampered by the exponentially large state space. Here we introduce the succession-diagram-based Markov chain (SD Markov chain), a coarse-grained representation that uses trap spaces (unescapable state subspaces) of the Boolean model as the states of a Markov chain. These trap spaces and their succession diagram can be efficiently identified, and constitute a dramatic reduction compared to the full state space. The SD Markov chain preserves the decisions that trap the system's dynamics while making the state space computationally tractable. Using an ensemble of random Boolean networks with known state transition matrices, we show that the SD Markov chain accurately reproduces attractors, basins of attraction, convergence probabilities, decision transitions, and sequences of events. We illustrate the insights and predictions that arise from the SD Markov chain by analyzing a published model of cancer cell metastasis. By combining the interpretability of the succession diagram with the probabilistic rigor of Markov analysis, the SD Markov chain offers a compact quantitative description of the attractor landscape and provides a new avenue for studying control and stability in complex biological systems.

Indexed as

Markov ChainsModels, BiologicalSystems BiologyAlgorithmsComputer SimulationHumansNeoplasm Metastasis

Identifiers

PMID41998018
PMCPMC13273057

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.