Research article

On the origin of distribution patterns of motifs in biological networks

Arun S Konagurthu and Arthur M Lesk

The Huck Institute for Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Systems Biology 2008, 2:73doi:10.1186/1752-0509-2-73

Published:	12 August 2008

Abstract

Background

Inventories of small subgraphs in biological networks have identified commonly-recurring patterns, called motifs. The inference that these motifs have been selected for function rests on the idea that their occurrences are significantly more frequent than random.

Results

Our analysis of several large biological networks suggests, in contrast, that the frequencies of appearance of common subgraphs are similar in natural and corresponding random networks.

Conclusion

Indeed, certain topological features of biological networks give rise naturally to the common appearance of the motifs. We therefore question whether frequencies of occurrences are reasonable evidence that the structures of motifs have been selected for their functional contribution to the operation of networks.