Beta-binders for Biological Quantitative Experiments

The similarities between biological systems and distributed and mobile systems suggest that the theory of process calculi could be a useful starting point for understanding, if not predicting, the behaviour of complex biological systems. To formally model in vitro or in vivo experiments, appropriate quantitative extensions of process calculi have to be investigated. This paper focuses on Beta-binders, a language of processes with typed interaction sites which has been recently introduced to accurately represent biological entities. Here the syntax and semantics of Beta-binders are enriched to achieve a stochastic version of it, in order to obtain quantitative measures on biological phenomena. The quantitative parameters are derived from typed interaction sites introducing the concept of affinity. The relevance of quantitative reasoning is outlined running a biological example.