Reaction networks and Boolean networks are two prominent approaches for modeling biological systems. They rely on drastically different philosophies : the former consists of a detailed process-centred description with continuous time and values and the latter of an abstract species-centred description with discrete steps and Boolean values.
In order to better understand the relationship between these two formalisms, my PhD work focused on converting reaction networks to Boolean networks. This presentation delves into the pivotal role of constraints during the two steps of the process: (1) in the definition of the properties of the input reaction network we want to preserve and (2) the synthesis of the Boolean networks complying with these properties.
So far, the evaluation of the approach on toy examples and real-world reaction networks from the repository BioModels, has demonstrated its effectiveness. The perspectives mainly concern the practical relevance of the Boolean networks we synthesise, as well as the formal exploration of the relationship with other semantics of reaction networks.
