Skip to main content
. 2018 Apr 23;14(4):e1006114. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006114

Fig 5. Two potential mechanisms from the propagation delay network in Fig 4 which end up being reducible.

Fig 5

On top is a COPY element that does not specify a mechanism. By being OFF in the current state, the COPY element constrains its input to be OFF in the previous state, but it does not constrain the future state of its output element, because the state of the XOR element still completely depends on the unknown state of its other input (shown here in grey). The bottom panel is a set of COPY elements which do not specify a high-order mechanism because they do not have an irreducible cause (the red line partitions the cause in two with no loss of information). Taking each COPY element independently fully constrains the past state of its input to be OFF.