Figure 1. Paradigmatic integrated signaling–transcriptional circuit switch.

(A) Schematic representation: Nodes represent proteins, regulated by protein kinases with concentrations and , where and stand for transcription factors that can be phosporylated to generate and . Black lines represent transcriptional interactions, while grey lines stand for protein-protein interactions. (B) Time evolution of the input signals (black) and (grey), with . In this work is considered to have a rising time smaller than . (C) Amplitude of the transient asymmetry between signals . Here the maximal asymmetry is (see also Table 1 and Methods).