BACKGROUND: An appropriate choice of the modeling formalism from the broad range of existing ones may be crucial for efficiently describing and analyzing biological systems. RESULTS: We propose a new unifying and incremental formalism for the representation and modeling of biological interaction networks. This formalism allows automated translations into other formalisms, thus enabling a thorough study of the dynamic properties of a biological system. As a first illustration, we propose a translation into the R. Thomas' multivalued logical formalism which provides a possible semantics; a methodology for constructing such models is presented on a classical benchmark: the lambda phage genetic switch. We also show how to extract from our model a classical ODE description of the dynamics of a system. CONCLUSION: This approach provides an additional level of description between the biological and mathematical ones. It yields, on the one hand, a knowledge expression in a form which is intuitive for biologists and, on the other hand, its representation in a formal and structured way.
BACKGROUND: An appropriate choice of the modeling formalism from the broad range of existing ones may be crucial for efficiently describing and analyzing biological systems. RESULTS: We propose a new unifying and incremental formalism for the representation and modeling of biological interaction networks. This formalism allows automated translations into other formalisms, thus enabling a thorough study of the dynamic properties of a biological system. As a first illustration, we propose a translation into the R. Thomas' multivalued logical formalism which provides a possible semantics; a methodology for constructing such models is presented on a classical benchmark: the lambda phage genetic switch. We also show how to extract from our model a classical ODE description of the dynamics of a system. CONCLUSION: This approach provides an additional level of description between the biological and mathematical ones. It yields, on the one hand, a knowledge expression in a form which is intuitive for biologists and, on the other hand, its representation in a formal and structured way.
Authors: M Hucka; A Finney; H M Sauro; H Bolouri; J C Doyle; H Kitano; A P Arkin; B J Bornstein; D Bray; A Cornish-Bowden; A A Cuellar; S Dronov; E D Gilles; M Ginkel; V Gor; I I Goryanin; W J Hedley; T C Hodgman; J-H Hofmeyr; P J Hunter; N S Juty; J L Kasberger; A Kremling; U Kummer; N Le Novère; L M Loew; D Lucio; P Mendes; E Minch; E D Mjolsness; Y Nakayama; M R Nelson; P F Nielsen; T Sakurada; J C Schaff; B E Shapiro; T S Shimizu; H D Spence; J Stelling; K Takahashi; M Tomita; J Wagner; J Wang Journal: Bioinformatics Date: 2003-03-01 Impact factor: 6.937
Authors: Daniel Machado; Rafael S Costa; Miguel Rocha; Eugénio C Ferreira; Bruce Tidor; Isabel Rocha Journal: AMB Express Date: 2011-12-05 Impact factor: 3.298