Delays in biological regulatory networks (BRN)

Abstract

In this article, we propose a refinement of the modeling of genetic regulatory networks based on the approach of René Thomas. The notion of delays of activation/inhibition are added in order to specify which variable is faster affected by a change of its regulators. The formalism of linear hybrid automata is well suited to allow such refinement. We then use HyTech for two purposes: (1) to find automatically all paths from a specified initial state to another one and (2) to synthesize constraints on the delay parameters in order to follow any specific path. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.