Qualitative Analysis of Gene Regulatory Networks by Satisfiability Checking of Linear Temporal Logic

Abstract

We developed a method for analyzing the dynamics of gene regulatory networks in purely qualitative fashion. In our method, constraints for possible behaviors of a network and a biological property of interest are described as Linear Temporal Logic formulas, being automatically analyzed by satisfiability checking. In this way, we can investigate whether there exists some behavior which satisfies a specified property or whether all the behaviors satisfy a specified property, which are difficult in quantitative analysis.