Attractor Stability of Boolean networks under noise

Abstract: We study the impact of noise on attractor dynamics in Boolean networks, focusing on their stability and transition behaviors. By constructing attractor matrices based on single-node perturbations, we propose a framework to quantify attractor stability and identify dominant attractors. We find that attractors are more stable than predicted by basin sizes, showing the importance of dynamical structure in noisy environments. In addition, under global perturbations, basin sizes dictate long-term behavior; under local noise, however, attractor dominance is determined by noise-induced transition patterns rather than basin sizes. Our results show that transition dynamics induced by stochastic perturbations provide an efficient and quantitative description for the attractor stability and dynamics in Boolean networks under noise.