Structural Controllability of Boolean Control Networks under Partial Information

Abstract

It is worth noting that both nodes’ coupling connections and logical updating functions play a vital role in state evolutions of Boolean networks (BNs). In this paper, a new concept named structural controllability (SC) about Boolean control networks (BCNs) with known partial information on nodes’ connections is studied. Then, by referring to semi-tensor product (STP) techniques, several types of SC are presented according to different issues of Boolean functions. Thereafter, several necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for SC of BCNs. Finally, a biological model of the lactose operon in Escherichia coli is simulated to show the effectiveness of the main theoretical results.