Derivation of qualitative dynamical models from biochemical networks

Abstract

As technological advances allow a better identification of cellular networks, more and more molecular data are produced allowing the construction of detailed molecular interaction maps. One strategy to get insights into the dynamical properties of such systems is to derive compact dynamical models from these maps, in order to ease the analysis of their dynamics. Starting from a case study, we present a methodology for the derivation of qualitative dynamical models from biochemical networks. Properties are formalised using abstract interpretation. We first abstract states and traces by quotienting the number of instances of chemical species by intervals. Since this abstraction is too coarse to reproduce the properties of interest, we refine it by introducing additional constraints. The resulting abstraction is able to identify the dynamical properties of interest in our case study.