Multi-agent-based bio-network simulation platform for systems biology

Abstract

Recently, a collective effort from multiple research areas has been made to understand biological systems at the system level. These researches require the ability to simulate particular biological systems as cells, organs, organisms and communities. In this paper, a novel bio-network simulation platform is proposed for system biology studies by combining agent approaches. We consider a biological system as a set of active computational components interacting with each other and with an external environment. Then, we propose a bio-network platform for simulating the behaviours of biological systems, and modelling them in terms of bio-entities and society-entities. As a demonstrate, we discuss how a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network can be seen as a society of autonomous interactive components. Interactions among the small PPI networks can emerge a large PPI network which has its remarkable ability to accomplish a complex function or task. Based on the proposed approach, various simulators with different functions can be embedded in the simulation platform, and further researches can be done from design to development, and complexity validation of biological system.