Title
Universal Distribution Of Component Frequencies In Biological And Technological Systems
Abstract
Bacterial genomes and large-scale computer software projects both consist of a large number of components (genes or software packages) connected via a network of mutual dependencies. Components can be easily added or removed from individual systems, and their use frequencies vary over many orders of magnitude. We study this frequency distribution in genomes of similar to 500 bacterial species and in over 2 million Linux computers and find that in both cases it is described by the same scale-free power-law distribution with an additional peak near the tail of the distribution corresponding to nearly universal components. We argue that the existence of a power law distribution of frequencies of components is a general property of any modular system with a multilayered dependency network. We demonstrate that the frequency of a component is positively correlated with its dependency degree given by the total number of upstream components whose operation directly or indirectly depends on the selected component. The observed frequency/dependency degree distributions are reproduced in a simple mathematically tractable model introduced and analyzed in this study.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1073/pnas.1217795110
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Keywords
Field
DocType
gene frequency, metabolic network, software dependency
Computer software,Topology,Orders of magnitude (numbers),Pareto distribution,Computer science,Metabolic network,Theoretical computer science,Dependency network,Software,Modular design
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
110
15
0027-8424
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.40
5
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tin Yau Pang121.75
Sergei Maslov220.40