METABOLIC NETWORKS ROBUSTNESS: THEORY, SIMULATIONS AND RESULTS

Metabolic networks are composed of several functional modules, reproducing metabolic pathways and describing the entire cellular metabolism of an organism. In the last decade, an enormous interest has grown for the study of tolerance to errors and attacks in metabolic networks. Studies on their robustness have suggested that metabolic networks are tolerant to errors, but very vulnerable to targeted attacks against highly connected nodes. However, many findings on metabolic networks suggest that the above classification is too simple and imprecise, since hub node attacks can be by-passed if alternative metabolic paths can be exploited. On the contrary, non-hub nodes attacks can affect cell …