Genes, Neurons, and the Internet Found to Have Some Identical Organizing Principles.

Byline: American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science

REHOVOT, Israel, Nov. 6 (AScribe Newswire) -- How do 30,000 genes in our DNA work together to form a large part of who we are? How do one hundred billion neurons operate in our brain? The huge number of factors involved makes such complex networks hard to crack. Now, a study published in the October 25 issue of Science uncovers a strategy for finding the organizing principles of virtually any network - from neural networks to ecological food webs or the Internet.

A team headed by Dr. Uri Alon, of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Molecular Cell Biology Department has found several such organizational patterns - which they call "network motifs" - underlying genetic, neural, technological, and food networks. The mathematical technique was first proposed by Alon earlier this year …