Figure 4 .

In order to explore the energetic impacts of the cis-interaction between TRAF trimers on spatial–temporal dynamics of the system, three scenarios with the weak-, moderate- and strong-binding affinities of these cis-interactions were tested separately. The numbers of cis-interactions formed in these three scenarios are plotted in (a) as a function of simulation time steps, whereas the numbers of free IκB in the system are shown in (b). More systematical tests were further carried out, in which we changed the binding affinities of cis-interaction from −6 to −15 kT, with an interval of 1 kT for both dimerization and oligomerization systems. The average numbers of oscillation periods were derived from the multiple trajectories of these systems and were plotted as histogram in (c) as a function of cis-binding affinity. The results from the oligomerization system are shown by the striped bars, whereas the results from the dimerization control system are shown by the black bars.