A Domain Specific Language Approach for Genetic Regulatory Mechanisms Analysis

Systems biology and synthetic biology can be considered as model-driven methodologies. In this context, models are used to discover emergent properties arising from the complex interactions between components. Most available tools propose simulation frameworks to study models of biological systems. Simulation only explores a limited number of behaviors of these models. This may lead to a biased view of the system. On the contrary, model checking explores all the possible behaviors. The use of model checking in the domain of life sciences is limited. It suffers from the complexity of modeling languages designed by and for computer scientists. This article describes an approach based on Domain Specific Languages. It provides a comprehensible, yet formal, language called GReg to describe genetic regulatory mechanisms and their properties, and to apply powerful model checking techniques on them. GReg's objective is to shelter the user from the complexity of those underlying techniques.