Robustness and Redundancy in Large Genetic Networks

Andreas Wagner
Department of Biology, University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM, USA
Phone: 505-277-2021; Fax: 505-277-0304
Email: wagnera@unm.edu

Is redundancy caused by gene duplications responsible for the weak phenotype of many gene knock-out mutations? I will analyze the structure and evolution of a large protein interaction network in yeast to address this question. Structurally, the network belongs to the growing class of scale-free small-world networks found in a variety of unrelated areas of science, such as the internet, sociological networks, and metabolism. Evolutionarily, the network shows a high turnover of protein interactions. Abundant shared protein interactions among duplicate gene products in this network might indicate pervasive genetic redundancy. However, such common interactions are rare.