Chemical Reaction Systems, Computer Algebra and Systems Biology

In this invited paper, we survey some of the results obtained in the computer algebra team of Lille, in the domain of systems biology. So far, we have mostly focused on models (systems of equations) arising from generalized chemical reaction systems. Eight years ago, our team was involved in a joint project, with physicists and biologists, on the modeling problem of the circadian clock of the green algae

Ostreococcus tauri

. This cooperation led us to different algorithms dedicated to the reduction problem of the deterministic models of chemical reaction systems. More recently, we have been working more tightly with another team of our lab, the BioComputing group, interested by the stochastic dynamics of chemical reaction systems. This cooperation led us to efficient algorithms for building the ODE systems which define the statistical moments associated to these dynamics. Most of these algorithms were implemented in the MAPLE computer algebra software. We have chosen to present them through the corresponding MAPLE packages.