An enriched network motif family regulates multistep cell fate transitions with restricted reversibility
Fig 4
Four-attractor motifs in the early T cell transcriptional network.
A. Influence diagram for transcriptional regulations among four core factors controlling the early T cell development. Arrows represent activations and short bars represent inhibitions. B. Functional subnetworks of the T cell network were systematically obtained by removing regulations from the network. These subnetworks were screened by the criterion that four attractors with stepwise changes of TFs exist in the absence of Notch signal. C. Complexity atlas showing the relationships of the two four-attractor motifs in the subnetworks of the T cell model. Top callout shows the full network in the absence of Notch. Bottom callouts show examples of the minimum functional subnetworks of the two types with particular numbers of regulations. Red: Type I motif. Blue: Type II motif. Green: Hybrid motif. D. Overlaid four attractors for each of the 66 minimum topologies. Colored dots denote the stable steady states. Colored lines connect states of their corresponding topologies. All models shown in this figure are built with the multiplicative form of Hill functions.