An approach to the engineering of cellular models based on P systems

Abstract

Living cells assembled into colonies or tissues communicate using complex systems. These systems consist in the interaction between many molecular species distributed over many compartments. Among the different cellular processes used by cells to monitor their environment and respond accordingly, gene regulatory networks, rather than individual genes, are responsible for the information processing and orchestration of the appropriate response [16]. In this respect, synthetic biology has emerged recently as a novel discipline aiming at unravelling the design principles in gene regulatory systems by synthetically engineering transcriptional networks which perform a specific and prefixed task [2]. Formal modelling and analysis are key methodologies used in the field to engineer, assess and compare different genetic designs or devices. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.