Language Based Techniques for Systems Biology (original) (raw)

Formal Executable Descriptions of Biological Systems

2005

The similarities between systems of living entities and systems of concurrent processes may support biological experiments in silico. Process calculi offer a formal framework to describe biological systems, as well as to analyse their behaviour, both from a qualitative and a quantitative point of view. A couple of little examples help us in showing how this can be done. We mainly focus our attention on the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the considered biological systems, and briefly illustrate which kinds of analysis are possible. We use a known stochastic calculus for the first example. We then present some statistics collected by repeatedly running the specification, that turn out to agree with those obtained by experiments in vivo. Our second example motivates a richer calculus. Its stochastic extension requires a non trivial machinery to faithfully reflect the real dynamic behaviour of biological systems.

Languages for Biological Models: Importance, Implications and Challenges-A Work In Progress

lukechurch.net

In this paper we outline a new kind of challenge for the Psychology of Programming research community: how do we build programming languages to support modelling biological systems? We argue that such systems tend to be tightly coupled, partially understood and highly complex, and as such rather similar to modern software. We consider design challenges of such systems, including designing for reverse engineering, how to assist social processes and the importance of translucent abstractions. Finally, we consider how answers to these challenges may assist in the design of other domain specific languages.

Process Calculi Abstractions for Biology

Natural Computing Series, 2009

Several approaches have been proposed to model biological systems by means of the formal techniques and tools available in computer science. To mention just a few of them, some representations are inspired by Petri Nets theory, and some other by stochastic processes. A most recent approach consists in interpreting the living entities as terms of process calculi where the behavior of the represented systems can be inferred by applying syntaxdriven rules.

An Automated Translation from a Narrative Language for Biological Modelling into Process Algebra

Computational Methods in Systems Biology, 2007

The aim of this work is twofold. First, we propose an high level textual modelling language, which is meant to be biologically intuitive and hence easily usable by life scientists in modelling intra-cellular systems. Secondly, we provide an automatic translation of the proposed language into Beta-binders, a bio-inspired process calculus, which allows life scientists to formally analyse and simulate their

PML: Toward a high-level formal language for biological systems

2007

Documentation of knowledge about biological pathways is often informal and vague, making it difficult to efficiently synthesize the work of others into a holistic understanding of a system. Several researchers have proposed solving this problem by modeling pathways using formal languages, which have a precise and consistent semantics. While precise, many of these languages may be too low-level to model feasibly complex pathways.

A logic for biological systems

Biosystems, 2000

This paper proposes a specification language, hybrid projection temporal logic of modelling, analyzing and verifying biological systems which can be considered, in general, to be hybrid systems consisting of a non-trivial mixture of discrete and continuous components. The syntax and semantics of the logic are presented, and some examples of hybrid systems are modelled to illustrate the formalism.

The Equivalence between Biology and Computation

Computational Methods in Systems Biology, 2009

A major challenge in computational systems biology is the articulation of a biological process in a form which can be understood by the biologist yet is amenable to computational execution. Process calculi have proved to especially powerful computational tools for modelling and reasoning about biological processes and we have previously described, and implemented, a Narrative approach to describing biological models

What can formal methods bring to systems biology?

FM, 2009

This position paper argues that the operational modelling approaches from the formal methods community can be applied fruitfully within the systems biology domain. The results can be complementary to the traditional mathematical descriptive modelling approaches used in systems biology. We discuss one example: a recent Petri net analysis of C. elegans vulval development.

Model Checking Biological Systems Described Using Ambient Calculus

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

We propose a way of performing model checking analysis for biological systems. The technics were developed for a CTL* logic built upon Ambient Calculus. We introduce labeled syntax trees for ambient processes and use them as possible worlds in a Kripke structure developed for a propositional branching temporal logic. The accessibility relation over labeled syntax trees is generated by the reduction over corresponding Ambient Calculus processes. Providing the algorithms for calculating the accessibility relation between states, we open the perspective of using model checking algorithms developed for temporal logics in analyzing any phenomena described in Ambient Calculus. ⋆

Computer programs as theories in biology

Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1984

Complex theories in biology may be developed, refined, and tested by the use of computer programmed simulations. The computer is recognized as a powerful tool for theory development; it is, in fact, the only means of thoroughly testing and examining a large and intricate theory. A program as a text is a statement of a theory and when run on the computer it is model of that theory. As the program's behavior is then the major argument for the credibility of a large and complex theory, the program itself is the only irrefutable statement of the theory. Bur programs written in the currently available programming languages tend to be incomprehensible. We argue that the program should be the definitive statement of the theory. In addition, the program plus a series of abstractions is a vehicle for effective communication of complex theories in biology. Several techniques of computer science are borrowed, for the purpose of developing a methodology for abstraction and a language for representing abstractions. The arguments are fully illustrated with a recently published biological theory.