Figure 3

Finite state machine of our regulatory network taken as an example in asynchronous simulation. The state [1010] colored in green also corresponds to a steady state in the asynchronous simulation. (All the steady states are the same in synchronous and asynchronous simulations) The 3 states [0010], [1100], [1011] which correspond to a state cycle in the synchronous simulation are still colored in red, but this figure clearly shows that they do not correspond to a state cycle in the asynchronous simulation. Actually, even if there are several paths enabling to reach cyclically those three states (one of those paths is indicated with purple arrows), there are also several paths leading to the steady state from which there is no path back to those 3 states.