In Silico Evolution of Gene Cooption in Pattern-Forming Gene Networks
Figure 2
The gene-gene interaction matrix, a core element of the coarse-grained modeling of gene regulatory networks. Each gene (horizontal arrow) is regulated by the products of other genes via upstream enhancer elements (boxes). The strength and direction of regulation (depicted as differently colored saturation levels) are a function of both the regulatory element and the abundance of its corresponding gene product. The left-most column corresponds to the regulatory elements for the action of the morphogen, M = Bicoid (external factor for the GRN). The genotype is represented as the matrix, , of the regulatory interactions, and the phenotype is the vector, Ŝ, of the gene product levels at equilibrium. Modified after [7].
