Biased Eukaryotic Gene Regulation Rules Suggest Genome Behavior Is Near Edge of Chaos

Control rules governing the activity of eukaryotic genes appear strongly biased toward large numbers of "canalizing" inputs. The ensemble of networks with the observed bias predicts cells are in an ordered regime with convergent flow in transcription state space, a percolating subnetwork of genes fixed on or off and isolated islands of twinkling genes, a near power-law distribution of cascades of gene activity changes following perturbations, and a square-root relationship between the number of genes and the number of cell types.