A Framework for Modeling and Verifying Biological Systems using Membrane Computing

Membrane computing can abstract biological structures and behaviors, and formally represent them without disregarding their biological characteristics. However, there is the lack of a proper framework to model and verify biological systems with membrane computing that could act as a guideline for researchers in computational biology or systems biology in using and exploring the advantages of membrane computing. This paper presents a framework for modeling and verifying biological systems using membrane computing. The framework processes are made up of biological requirement and property specification, membrane computing model, membrane computing simulation strategy, and model checking approach. The evaluation of the framework with biological systems shows that the proposed framework can be used as the first step to further improve the modeling and verification approaches in membrane computing.