How retroactivity impacts the robustness of genetic networks

Abstract

This paper studies how retroactivity impacts the robustness of gene transcription networks against parameter perturbations. By employing the linearization technique and the real stability radius, we provide comparisons of the robustness between gene transcription networks with retroactivity and ones without retroactivity. Both numerical and analytical results show that retroactivity tends to decrease such robustness. This finding in turn implies that modular genetic networks tend to be more robust against parameter perturbations.