Biological logics are restricted

In order to survive, reproduce and (in multicellular organisms) differentiate, cells must control the concentrations of the myriad different proteins that are encoded in the genome. The precision of this control is limited by the inevitable randomness of individual molecular events. Here we explore how cells can maximize their control power in the presence of these physical limits; formally, we solve the theoretical problem of maximizing the information transferred from input...

In this work, we introduce Boolformer, the first Transformer architecture trained to perform end-to-end symbolic regression of Boolean functions. First, we show that it can predict compact formulas for complex functions which were not seen during training, when provided a clean truth table. Then, we demonstrate its ability to find approximate expressions when provided incomplete and noisy observations. We evaluate the Boolformer on a broad set of real-world binary classificat...

Genetic regulatory networks are defined by their topology and by a multitude of continuously adjustable parameters. Here we present a class of simple models within which the relative importance of topology vs. interaction strengths becomes a well-posed problem. We find that complexity - the ability of the network to adopt multiple stable states - is dominated by the adjustable parameters. We comment on the implications for real networks and their evolution.

Modelling gene regulatory networks not only requires a thorough understanding of the biological system depicted but also the ability to accurately represent this system from a mathematical perspective. Throughout this chapter, we aim to familiarise the reader with the biological processes and molecular factors at play in the process of gene expression regulation.We first describe the different interactions controlling each step of the expression process, from transcription to...

A fundamental task in developmental biology is to identify the mechanisms which drive morphogenesis. In many cases, pattern formation is driven by the positional information determined by both the gradient of maternal factors and hard-wired mechanisms embedded in the genome. Alternative mechanisms of positional information that contribute to patterning are the influence of signals derived from surrounding tissues. In this paper, we show that the interplay of geometrical const...

It is tempting to believe that we now own the genome. The ability to read and re-write it at will has ushered in a stunning period in the history of science. Nonetheless, there is an Achilles heel exposed by all of the genomic data that has accrued: we still don't know how to interpret it. Many genes are subject to sophisticated programs of transcriptional regulation, mediated by DNA sequences that harbor binding sites for transcription factors which can up- or down-regulate ...

We explore a definition of complexity based on logic functions, which are widely used as compact descriptions of rules in diverse fields of contemporary science. Detailed numerical analysis shows that (i) logic complexity is effective in discriminating between classes of functions commonly employed in modelling contexts; (ii) it extends the notion of canalisation, used in the study of genetic regulation, to a more general and detailed measure; (iii) it is tightly linked to th...

We propose a static and a dynamic approach to model biological signaling networks, and show how each can be used to answer relevant biological questions. For this we use the two different mathematical tools of Propositional Logic and Integer Programming. The power of discrete mathematics for handling qualitative as well as quantitative data has so far not been exploited in Molecular Biology, which is mostly driven by experimental research, relying on first-order or statistica...

Interaction graphs provide an important qualitative modeling approach for System Biology. This paper presents a novel approach for construction of interaction graph with the help of Boolean function decomposition. Each decomposition part (Consisting of 2-bits) of the Boolean functions has some important significance. In the dynamics of a biological system, each variable or node is nothing but gene or protein. Their regulation has been explored in terms of interaction graphs w...

In synthetic biology, gene regulatory circuits are often constructed by combining smaller circuit components. Connections between components are achieved by transcription factors acting on promoters. If the individual components behave as true modules and certain module interface conditions are satisfied, the function of the composite circuits can in principle be predicted. In this paper, we investigate one of the interface conditions: fan-out. We quantify the fan-out, a conc...