Dynamic properties of network motifs contribute to biological network organization

Biological networks, such as those describing gene regulation, signal transduction, and neural synapses, are representations of large-scale dynamic systems. Discovery of organizing principles of biological networks can be enhanced by embracing the notion that there is a deep interplay between network structure and system dynamics. Recently, many structural characteristics of these non-random networks have been identified, but dynamical implications of the features have not been explored comprehensively. We demonstrate by exhaustive computational analysis that a dynamical property - stability or robustness to small perturbations - is highly correlated with the relative abundance of small subnetworks ( network motifs) in several previously determined biological networks. We propose that robust dynamical stability is an influential property that can determine the non-random structure of biological networks.