Eur. Phys. J. B 75, 305-310 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2010-00156-8

Explosive percolation in the human protein homology network

Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, 10031 NY, USA

Corresponding author: ^a hernanrozenfeld@gmail.com

Received: 24 January 2010
Revised: 25 April 2010
Published online: 19 May 2010

Abstract

We study the explosive character of the percolation transition in a real-world network. We show that the emergence of a spanning cluster in the Human Protein Homology Network (H-PHN) exhibits similar features to an Achlioptas-type process and is markedly different from regular random percolation. The underlying mechanism of this transition can be described by slow-growing clusters that remain isolated until the later stages of the process, when the addition of a small number of links leads to the rapid interconnection of these modules into a giant cluster. Our results indicate that the evolutionary-based process that shapes the topology of the H-PHN through duplication-divergence events may occur in sudden steps, similarly to what is seen in first-order phase transitions.