Modeling and Analysis of Biological Processes by Mem(Brane) Calculi and Systems

In recent years, the modeling and analysis techniques developed in the area of formal languages and of concurrent process calculi have been successfully applied to the field of Systems Biology. In this setting, Brane Calculi and Membrane Systems are two of the most prominent approaches for the modeling of the behaviour of biological membranes. Membrane Systems have been introduced by Gh. Pǎun as a class of distributed parallel computing devices of a biochemical type, while Brane Calculi are a family of process calculi, based on a set of biologically inspired primitives of membrane interaction. In this paper we model the behaviour of a biological process - namely, the LDL Cholesterol Degradation Pathway - in both Brane Calculi and Membrane Systems. We also provide a brief discussion on the application of analysis techniques to this case study. © 2006 IEEE.