Cliques and duplication-divergence network growth

A population of complete subgraphs or cliques in a protein network model is studied. The network evolves via duplication and divergence supplemented with linking a certain fraction of target-replica vertex pairs. We derive a clique population distribution, which scales linearly with the size of the network and is in perfect agreement with numerical simulations. Fixing both parameters of the model so that the number of links and abundance of triangles are equal to those observed in the fruitfly protein-binding network, we precisely predict the 4- and 5-clique abundance. In addition, we show that such features as fat-tail degree distribution, various rates of average degree growth and non-averaging, revealed recently for a particular case of a completely asymmetric divergence, are present in a general case of arbitrary divergence.