Dynamics and robustness of the cardiac progenitor cell induced pluripotent stem cell network during cell phenotypes transition

Robustness is a fundamental characteristic of biological systems since all living systems need to adapt to internal or external perturbations, unpredictable environments, stochastic events and unreliable components, and so on. A long‐term challenge in systems biology is to reveal the origin of robustness underlying molecular regulator network. In this study, a simple Boolean model is used to investigate the global dynamic properties and robustness of cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) induced pluripotent stem cell network that governs reprogramming and directed differentiation process. It is demonstrated that two major attractors correspond to source and target cell phenotypes, respectively, and two dominating attracting trajectories characterise the biological pathways between two major cell phenotypes. In particular, the experimentally observed transition between different cell phenotypes can be reproduced and explained theoretically. Furthermore, the robustness of major attractors and trajectories is largely maintained with respect to small perturbations to the network. Taken together, the CPC‐induced pluripotent stem cell network is extremely robustly designed for their functions.Inspec keywords: cellular biophysics, Boolean functions, perturbation theory, molecular biophysics, cardiologyOther keywords: cardiac progenitor cell induced pluripotent stem cell network, cell phenotypes transition, biological systems, living systems, internal perturbations, external perturbations, unpredictable environments, stochastic events, unreliable components, long‐term challenge, systems biology, molecular regulator network, Boolean model, global dynamic properties, directed differentiation process, CPC‐induced pluripotent stem cell network