Towards a Computational Steering and Petri Nets Framework for the Modelling of Biochemical Reaction Networks

Computational steering is an interactive remote control of a long running application. The user can adopt it, e.g., to adjust simulation parameters on the fly. Simulation of large-scale biochemical networks is often computationally expensive, particularly stochastic and hybrid simulation. Such extremely time-consuming computations necessitate an interactive mechanism to permit users to try different paths and ask ”what-if-questions” while the simulation is in progress. In this context, Petri nets are of special importance, since they provide an intuitive visual representation of reaction networks. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for combining Petri nets and computational steering for the representation and interactive simulation of biochemical networks. The main merits of the developed framework are: intuitive representation of biochemical networks by means of Petri nets, distributed collaborative and interactive simulation, and tight coupling of simulation and visualisation.