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Kim Sneppen

Publications and source records attributed to Kim Sneppen.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Modularity and extreme edges of the internet.

We study the spectral properties of a diffusion process taking place on the Internet network focusing on the slowest decaying modes. These modes identify an underlying modular structure roughly corresponding to individual countries. For instance, in the slowest decaying mode the diffusion current flows from Russia to U.S. military sites. Quantitatively the modular structure manifests itself in a 10 times larger participation ratio of its slow decaying modes compared to a random scale-free network. We propose to use the fraction of nodes participating in slow decaying modes as a general measure of the modularity of a network. For the 100 slowest decaying modes of the Internet this fraction is approximately 30%. Finally, we suggest that the degree of isolation of an individual module can be assessed by comparing its participation in different diffusion modes.

Cell Physiological Phenomena↗

Localization of denaturation bubbles in random DNA sequences.

We study the thermodynamic and dynamic behaviors of twist-induced denaturation bubbles in a long, stretched random sequence of DNA. The small bubbles associated with weak twist are delocalized. Above a threshold torque, the bubbles of several tens of bases or larger become preferentially localized to AT-rich segments. In the localized regime, the bubbles exhibit "aging" and move around subdiffusively with continuously varying dynamic exponents. These properties are derived by using results of large-deviation theory together with scaling arguments and are verified by Monte Carlo simulations.

Base Composition↗

Stability puzzles in phage lambda.

In the absence of RecA-mediated cleavage of the repressor, the lambda prophage is exceptionally stable. We develop a stochastic model that predicts the stability of such epigenetic states from affinities of the molecular components. We find that the stability, in particular, depends on the maximum possible cI protein production, and on the number of translated cro proteins per transcribed mRNA. We apply the model to the behavior of recently published mutants of O(R) and find, in particular, that a mutant that overexpress cro behaves in a different way than what was predicted, thus suggesting that the current view of the O(R) switch is incomplete. The approach described here should be generally applicable to the stability of expressed states.

Journal Article↗

Specificity and stability in topology of protein networks.

Molecular networks guide the biochemistry of a living cell on multiple levels: Its metabolic and signaling pathways are shaped by the network of interacting proteins, whose production, in turn, is controlled by the genetic regulatory network. To address topological properties of these two networks, we quantified correlations between connectivities of interacting nodes and compared them to a null model of a network, in which all links were randomly rewired. We found that for both interaction and regulatory networks, links between highly connected proteins are systematically suppressed, whereas those between a highly connected and low-connected pairs of proteins are favored. This effect decreases the likelihood of cross talk between different functional modules of the cell and increases the overall robustness of a network by localizing effects of deleterious perturbations.

Cell Nucleus↗