  Recent evidence indicates that the abundance of recurring elementary
interaction patterns in complex networks, often called subgraphs or motifs,
carry significant information about their function and overall organization.
Yet, the underlying reasons for the variable quantity of different subgraph
types, their propensity to form clusters, and their relationship with the
networks' global organization remain poorly understood. Here we show that a
network's large-scale topological organization and its local subgraph structure
mutually define and predict each other, as confirmed by direct measurements in
five well studied cellular networks. We also demonstrate the inherent existence
of two distinct classes of subgraphs, and show that, in contrast to the
low-density type II subgraphs, the highly abundant type I subgraphs cannot
exist in isolation but must naturally aggregate into subgraph clusters. The
identified topological framework may have important implications for our
understanding of the origin and function of subgraphs in all complex networks.
