Section: Scientific Foundations

Computational systems biology

Systems biology is a cross-disciplinary domain involving biology, computer science, logics, mathematics, and physics to elucidate the high-level functions of the cell from their biochemical bases at the molecular level.

At the end of the Nineties, research in Bioinformatics evolved, passing from the analysis of the genomic sequence to the analysis of post-genomic interaction networks (expression of RNA and proteins, protein-protein interactions, etc). The complexity of these networks requires a large research effort to develop symbolic notation and analysis tools for biological processes and data. In order to scale-up, and get over the complexity walls to reason about biological systems, there is a general feeling that beyond providing tools to biologists, computer science has much to offer in terms of concepts and methods.

We are interested in the modeling and analysis of complex molecular processes in the cell, at different levels of abstraction, qualitative and quantitative. The most original aspect of our research can be summarized by the following identifications :

biological model = state transition system,

biological property = temporal logic formula,

validation = model-checking,

inference = constraint solving.

Our main research axis is thus the application of logic programming concepts and program verification techniques to the analysis of complex biochemical processes in the cell.