Network Motif - History

History

This idea was first presented in 2002 by Uri Alon and his group when network motifs were discovered in the gene regulation (transcription) network of the bacteria E. coli and then in a large set of natural networks.Since then, a considerable number of researches have been conducted on this subject. Some of these researches focus on the biological aspects and others work on computational facets. The first group endeavors to interpret the motifs detected for biological networks by the existing motif detection tools. For example, in work following, the network motifs found in E. coli were discovered in the transcription networks of other bacteria as well as yeast and higher organisms. A distinct set of network motifs were identified in other types of biological networks such as neuronal networks and protein interaction networks.

The second group of researches tries to improve the existing motif detection tools to make faster results on larger networks possible for researchers of the first group. Different algorithms are provided for this aim so far. These are elaborated in the next section in chronological order.

Recently, acc-MOTIF tool to detect network motifs became available.