Molecular networks robustness

The lifetime of the excited state of fluorophores may be altered by physical and biochemical properties of its environment. Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) is thus a powerful analytical tool for the quantitative mapping of fluorescent molecules that reports, for instance, on local ion concentration, pH, and viscosity, the fluorescence lifetime of a donor fluorophore, Forster resonance energy transfer can be also imaged by FLIM. This provides a robust method for mapping protein-protein interactions and for probing the complexity of molecular interaction networks. 

Although intermediate filaments are not universally associated with the cytoskeleton, neutrophils possess intermediate filaments of the vimentin type. Vimentin is a rod-shaped molecule of relative molecular mass 57 kDa that readily polymerises under physiological conditions to produce stable filaments 10-12 nm in diameter. Intermediate filaments are more robust than microfilaments and microtubules, and in neutrophils they form an open network of single filaments in the perinuclear space. 

P. Ao, D. Galas, L. Hood, X. Zhu, Cancer as robust intrinsic state of endogenous molecular-cellular network shaped by evolution. Med. Hypotheses. 70(3), 678-684 (2008)... 

If initially there are a variety of chemicals that form a complex network of mutual catalyzation, this system may be robust against the invasion of parasitic molecules. Such an idea resembles the stability of an ecosystem, where a complex network of several species may resist to invasion of external species. Hence we need to study if replication of complex reaction network can be sustained. In this case, from the beginning, there are many molecular species that mutually catalyze, allowing for the existence of many parasitic molecules. Here, complete replication of the system is probably difficult. Then the question we have to address is whether such a complex network can maintain molecules that catalyze the synthesis of the network species. This question was addressed by Dyson [9], as a possibility of a loose reproduction system. 

---