Biologically Inspired Formalisms

The modelling and the analysis of biological systems has attracted the interest of several research communities. The notion of compartments appears in rule-based formalisms as membrane computing, and in several process calculi (bio-ambients, brane calculi, etc.). Multiset rewriting appears both in membrane computing and Petri nets. A cross fertilization of various research areas leads to deeper investigations of the relations between these related formalisms, trying also to understand their similarities and differences. MeCBIC started as an workshop devoted to membrane computing and biologically inspired process calculi. In the last years, it also attracted papers dealing with (bio-inspired) Petri nets, emphasizing the links between Petri nets and membrane systems. Membrane computing deals with the computational properties, making use of automata, formal languages, and complexity results. Petri nets are used to model and analyse several biological systems by using advanced software tools. Certain process calculi, such as mobile ambients and brane calculi, describe the compartments and their interactions, emphasizing on behaviour equivalences and stochastic aspects.

The main aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working in these biologically inspired formalisms (membrane systems, Petri nets, ambient and brane calculi, various stochastic approaches) in order to present their recent results and to discuss new ideas concerning these formalisms, their properties and relationships. Topics presented at MeCBIC include (but are not limited to):

• Biologically inspired models and calculi;
• Biologically inspired systems and their applications;
• Analysis of properties of biologically inspired models and languages;
• Theoretical links and comparison between different models/systems.

The papers were reviewed by at least three referees. Many thanks for the evaluation process go to all the members of the Programme Committee:

	Bogdan Aman	Roberto Barbuti	Luca Cardelli	Gabriel Ciobanu
	Erik de Vink	Jean-Louis Giavitto	Jane Hillston	Jetty Kleijn
	Jean Krivine	Emanuela Merelli	Paolo Milazzo	Gethin Norman
	G. Michele Pinna	Franck Pommereau	Jason Steggles	Angelo Troina.

We express our gratitude to the invited speakers Maciej Koutny and Vincent Danos for their interesting talks. Maciej Koutny presents the automated synthesis from behavioural specifications for a number of Petri net models relevant from the point of view of membrane systems. Vincent Danos defines a class of local stochastic rewrite rules on directed site trees, giving a compact presentation of coarse-grained differential systems describing the dynamics of these rules.

Many thanks to Bogdan Aman, Jason Steggles and local organizers for their help.

Gabriel Ciobanu
Iaşi, Romania