A Simple Calculus for Proteins and Cells

  • Authors:
  • Cosimo Laneve;Fabien Tarissan

  • Affiliations:
  • Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione, Università di Bologna;Équipe PPS, CNRS & Universitéé Paris VII

  • Venue:
  • Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS)
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The use of process calculi to represent biological systems has led to the design of different calculi such as brane calculi [Luca Cardelli. Brane calculi. In CMSB, pages 257-278, 2004] and @k-calculus [Vincent Danos and Cosimo Laneve. Formal molecular biology. Theoritical Computer Science, 325(1):69-110, 2004]. Both have proved to be useful to model different types of biological systems. As an attempt to unify the two directions, we introduce the bio@k-calculus, a simple calculus for describing proteins and cells, in which bonds are represented by means of shared names and interactions are modelled at the domain level. Protein-protein interactions have to be at most binary and cell interactions have to fit with sort constraints. We define the semantics of bio@k-calculus, analyse its properties, and discuss its expressiveness by modelling two significant examples: a signalling pathway and a virus infection.