Spatial information and boolean genetic regulatory networks

Abstract

Modelling frameworks for biological networks are used to reason on the models and their properties. One of the main problems with such modelling frameworks is to determine the dynamics of gene regulatory networks (GRN). Recently, it has been observed in in vivo experiments and in genomic and transcriptomic studies, that spatial information are useful to better understand both the mechanisms and the dynamics of GRN. In this paper we propose to extend the modelling framework of R. Thomas in order to introduce such spatial information between genes, and we will show how these further informations allow us to restrict the number of dynamics to consider. ©Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.