From multivalued to Boolean functions: preservation of soft nested canalization

Élisabeth Remy (1) , Paul Ruet (2)

1 I2M - Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille
2 IRIF (UMR_8243) - Institut de Recherche en Informatique Fondamentale

Nested canalization (NC) is a property of Boolean functions which has been recently extended to multivalued functions. We study the effect of the Van Ham mapping (from multivalued to Boolean functions) on this property. We introduce the class of softly nested canalizing (SNC) multivalued functions, and prove that the Van Ham mapping sends SNC multivalued functions to NC Boolean functions. Since NC multivalued functions are SNC, this preservation property holds for NC multivalued functions as well. We also study the relevance of SNC functions in the context of gene regulatory network modelling.

Mots clés: nested canalizing functions; Boolean functions; multivalued functions; regulatory network modelling

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Informatique [cs]; Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Élisabeth Remy, Paul Ruet. From multivalued to Boolean functions: preservation of soft nested canalization. 2023. ⟨hal-04104379⟩