Discovery and analysis of biochemical subnetwork hierarchies

Abstract

The representation of a biochemical network as a graph is the coarsest level of description in cellular biochemistry. By studying the network structure one can draw conclusions on the large scale organisation of the biochemical processes. We describe methods how one can extract hierarchies of subnetworks, how these can be interpreted and further deconstructed to find autonomous subnetworks. The large-scale organisation we find is characterised by a tightly connected core surrounded by increasingly loosely connected substrates.