Theoretical frameworks to estimate the tolerance of metabolic networks to
various failures are important to evaluate the robustness of biological complex
systems in systems biology. In this paper, we focus on a measure for robustness
in metabolic networks, namely, the impact degree, and propose an approximation
method to predict the probability distribution of impact degrees from metabolic
network structures using the theory of branching process. We demonstrate the
relevance of this method by testing it on real-world metabolic networks.
Although the approximation method possesses a few limitations, it may be a
powerful tool for evaluating metabolic robustness.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, 4 table
