• FRACTAL MODELING OF SCALE-FREE NETWORKS IN BIOLOGY

Abstract

Scale-free networks are copious in nature and are present in diverse systems such as the nervous system of the human body, the World Wide Web and the chemical network of a cell. Developmental models simulate the spatial – temporal development of a complex system. The system described in this paper combines the advantages of a L – systems into a single system with extensive modeling flexibility using fractals. The new system includes the ability to specify dynamic hierarchies as part of the specification. The developmental models used to generate a scale-free topology are stochastic, that is they create networks in which the nodes appear to be randomly connected to each other. Here we propose a simple model that generates scale-free networks in a deterministic fashion.