Fig. 3

Attractor states of the two-TF regulatory circuitry. a Force-field representation of the dynamical system of a regulatory circuitry consisting of two TFs with auto-activation and mutual-repression interactions. b Regulatory states of the TFs in the three enumerated attractor states. Highly expressed TFs and strong interactions are shown as thick lines, whereas thin lines represent intermediate expressions or interactions. Null expressions or interactions are depicted as dashed-lines. c, d Phase space representations of the two-TF circuits. Red regions represent the highly stable states. (c) Both TFs have equal degradation rates. d The degradation rate of the transcription factor A is increased by 50 % (denoted by A*)