Page "Gene regulatory network" Paragraph 23

Continuous network models of GRNs are an extension of the boolean networks described above.

Nodes still represent genes and connections between them regulatory influences on gene expression.

Genes in biological systems display a continuous range of activity levels and it has been argued that using a continuous representation captures several properties of gene regulatory networks not present in the Boolean model.

Formally most of these approaches are similar to an artificial neural network, as inputs to a node are summed up and the result serves as input to a sigmoid function, e. g., but proteins do often control gene expression in a synergistic, i. e. non-linear, way.

However there is now a continuous network model that allows grouping of inputs to a node thus realizing another level of regulation.

This model is formally closer to a higher order recurrent neural network.

The same model has also been used to mimic the evolution of cellular differentiation and even multicellular morphogenesis.