About the Authors

Yang-Yu Liu

Affiliations Center for Complex Network Research and Department of Physics,Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Jean-Jacques Slotine

Affiliations Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Albert-László Barabási

alb@neu.edu

Affiliations Center for Complex Network Research and Department of Physics,Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: Y-YL J-JS A-LB. Wrote the paper: Y-YL A-LB. Analyzed the empirical data and did the analytical and numerical calculations: Y-YL. Edited the manuscript: J-JS.