TOP
Search the Dagstuhl Website
Looking for information on the websites of the individual seminars? - Then please:
Not found what you are looking for? - Some of our services have separate websites, each with its own search option. Please check the following list:
Schloss Dagstuhl - LZI - Logo
Schloss Dagstuhl Services
Seminars
Within this website:
External resources:
  • DOOR (for registering your stay at Dagstuhl)
  • DOSA (for proposing future Dagstuhl Seminars or Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshops)
Publishing
Within this website:
External resources:
dblp
Within this website:
External resources:
  • the dblp Computer Science Bibliography


Dagstuhl Seminar 09091

Formal Methods in Molecular Biology

( Feb 22 – Feb 27, 2009 )

(Click in the middle of the image to enlarge)

Permalink
Please use the following short url to reference this page: https://www.dagstuhl.de/09091

Organizers





Summary

The Life Sciences, and in particular Molecular Biology, are a rather new application area for advanced computational concepts. Living systems, from cells to entire organisms, function by the complex, dynamic interaction of a large number of components (proteins, nucleic acids, metabolites). The set of “molecular players” continues to be explored in genome sequencing projects and related experiments. Their physical and regulatory relationships are determined in detailed molecular studies and represented in cellular “wiring diagrams” and “flow charts”. Such schematic pictures are used by biologists to reason about the expected behavior of biological systems, e.g. in response to disease processes or drug treatment. They can also be translated into quantitative mathematical descriptions of the system. With the recent explosion of biological knowledge, such approaches need to become more common and more formalized.

Formal logical models play an increasing role in the newly emerging field of Systems Biology. Compared to the classical, well-established approach of modeling biological processes using continuous and stochastic differential equations, formal logical models offer a number of important advantages: Easy compositionality, which allows the generation and management of large cellular models from a number of pre-defined and reliably manipulated building blocks; model checking for the rigorous exploration of model consistency, including the comprehensive exploration of state-space and the identification of necessary additions to an existing system description; unambiguous visualization based on the strictly enforced syntax of the modeling language. In addition, a number of recent studies have explored the combination of formal logical models with continuous and stochastic differential equation models, showing important relationships between the two approaches and further expanding the expressivity of the resulting models.

Many different formal modeling paradigms have been applied to molecular biology, each with its own community, formalisms and tools. The present seminar is intended to stimulate closer interaction within the field and to create a common platform for discussion. The program covered a large fraction of the diversity of formal modeling in molecular biology, including sessions on

  • ordinary differential equation models,
  • process calculi,
  • state machines
  • process algebras,
  • logics,
  • constraints-based modeling.

A major area of interest was the debate over the relative merits of the different approaches to modeling that were presented in the meeting, and the emerging interest in directly executable specifications in terms of the analytical techniques that can be used. In addition to computational modelers, the participants also included a number of high-profile systems biologists who presented important new developments at the experimental side of the life sciences in keynote speeches and provided crucial critical feedback on the validity of the formal modeling concepts. The meeting was particularly friendly and productive, and had a good mix of young and established researchers. Numerous new collaborations were established across the fields and are now followed up in longer-term research projects.


Modeling Competition

A central feature of the seminar was a modeling competition (with a highly collaborative flavor) of various modeling paradigms. This provided a unique opportunity for participants to directly compare their approaches and find common ground. It turned out that Dagstuhl is an ideal place to encourage this kind of productive and challenging interaction: new teams started to form already on the first day and many new analyses or collaborations took place during intense personal interactions and in small groups in front of the computer.

All contributions to the competition were evaluated by a committee of judges, supplemented by a public vote, based on informal presentations during the conference. This turned out to be a challenging task, as many contributions were of excellent quality, including some by teams that had just met for the first time at the seminar.

All votes were statistically evaluated with software based on the algorithm presented in [BAAH04], revealing an extremly good correlation between the total assessment by the committee of judges and the total assessment by the public vote.


Participants
  • M. Tauqeer Alam (University of Groningen, NL)
  • Heike Assmus (MPI für Molekulare Pflanzenphysiologie, DE)
  • Johnrob Y. Bantang (LMU München, DE)
  • Gregory Batt (INRIA - Le Chesnay, FR) [dblp]
  • Alexander Bockmayr (FU Berlin, DE)
  • Nicola Bonzanni (VU University Amsterdam, NL)
  • Rainer Breitling (University of Groningen, NL) [dblp]
  • Frank J. Bruggeman (CWI - Amsterdam, NL)
  • Luca Cardelli (Microsoft Research UK - Cambridge, GB) [dblp]
  • Federica Ciocchetta (University of Edinburgh, GB)
  • Maria Pamela C. David (LMU München, DE)
  • Andrea Degasperi (University of Glasgow, GB)
  • Finn Drabløs (NTNU - Trondheim, NO)
  • Wan Fokkink (VU University Amsterdam, NL)
  • Anna Gambin (University of Warsaw, PL) [dblp]
  • David Gilbert (University of Glasgow, GB) [dblp]
  • Simon Hardy (Mount Sinai Medical School - New York, US) [dblp]
  • Sampsa Hautaniemi (University of Helsinki, FI)
  • John K. Heath (University of Birmingham, GB)
  • Monika Heiner (BTU Cottbus, DE) [dblp]
  • Domitille Heitzler (INRIA - Le Chesnay, FR)
  • Jane Hillston (University of Edinburgh, GB) [dblp]
  • Mathias John (Universität Rostock, DE)
  • Andrzej M. Kierzek (University of Surrey, GB) [dblp]
  • Ina Koch (MPI f[r Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin, DE) [dblp]
  • Elzbieta Krepska (Free University of Amsterdam, NL)
  • Céline Kuttler (University of Lille III, FR)
  • Marek Kwiatkowski (University of Edinburgh, GB)
  • Cédric Lhoussaine (University of Lille, FR)
  • Wolfgang Marwan (MPI - Magdeburg, DE) [dblp]
  • Hiroshi Matsuno (Yamaguchi University, JP)
  • Carsten Maus (Universität Rostock, DE) [dblp]
  • Eduardo Mendoza (LMU München, DE)
  • Satoru Miyano (University of Tokyo, JP) [dblp]
  • Joachim Niehren (INRIA - University of Lille 1, FR) [dblp]
  • Alberto Policriti (University of Udine, IT)
  • Corrado Priami (Microsoft Research - University Trento, IT)
  • Haluk Resat (Pacific Northwest National Lab. - Richland, US)
  • Alessandro Romanel (Microsoft Research - University Trento, IT)
  • David Šafránek (Masaryk University - Brno, CZ)
  • Torsten Schaub (Universität Potsdam, DE) [dblp]
  • Heike Siebert (FU Berlin, DE)
  • Sylvain Soliman (INRIA - Le Chesnay, FR)
  • P.S. Thiagarajan (National University of Singapore, SG) [dblp]
  • Denis Thieffry (Universitof Marseille, FR)
  • Jerzy Tiuryn (University of Warsaw, PL)
  • Adelinde M. Uhrmacher (Universität Rostock, DE) [dblp]
  • Cristian Versari (University of Bologna, IT)
  • Juris Viksna (University of Latvia - Riga, LV)
  • Simon Youssef (LMU München, DE)
  • Liying Yu (University of Groningen, NL)
  • Gianluigi Zavattaro (University of Bologna, IT) [dblp]

Related Seminars
  • Dagstuhl Seminar 11151: Formal Methods in Molecular Biology (2011-04-10 - 2011-04-15) (Details)
  • Dagstuhl Seminar 14481: Multiscale Spatial Computational Systems Biology (2014-11-23 - 2014-11-28) (Details)

Classification
  • modeling/simulation
  • networks
  • semantics/specification/formal methods
  • verifcation/logic

Keywords
  • Petri nets
  • statecharts
  • pi-calculus
  • concurrency
  • constraints
  • process algebra
  • model checking
  • boolean networks
  • communicating automata
  • hybrid models
  • differntial equations
  • stochastic modeling