Fig. 1

Schematic representations of the ternary chimera switch (TCS) and the cascading bistable switches (CBS) models. The core EMT regulatory network in the TCS (a) model and the CBS (b) model. Bifurcation diagrams of mesenchymal (M) marker levels in response to exogenous TGF-β in the TCS model (c) and the CBS model (d). Bifurcation diagrams of ZEB1 mRNA levels in response to SNAIL for the miR-200/ZEB1 circuit in the TCS model (e) and the CBS model (f). In (a) and (b), μ ₃₄ represents miR-34 and μ ₂₀₀ represents miR-200. Solid arrows represent transcriptional activations and solid bar-headed arrows represent transcriptional inhibitions. Dashed bar-headed arrows represent microRNA-mediated regulations. The circled arrow along with ZEB1 in (a) represent ZEB1 self-activation and the circled bar-headed arrow along with SNAIL in (a) and (b) represent SNAIL self-inhibition. In (c) and (d), blue solid lines represent stable states and red dotted lines represent unstable states. The dotted arrow represents transitions between different stable states. The cell phenotype corresponding to each stable state is labeled and also shown in cartoon