Figure 2.

The tristable landscape for the cancer network from self-consistent approximation method. The parameters are set as: degradation constant k = 1, activation constant a = 0.5 and repression constant b = 0.5 (see the electronic supplementary material for parameter depictions). Diffusion coefficient D = 0.01. (a) The three-dimensional landscape and dominant kinetic paths. The yellow path represents the path from normal state attractor to cancer state attractor, and the magenta path represents the path from cancer state attractor to normal state attractor. Black paths represent the apoptosis paths for normal and cancer states. (b) The corresponding two-dimensional landscape of cancer network. Red arrows represent the negative gradient of potential energy and white arrows represent the probabilistic flux.