This book presents a set of 14 papers accompanying the lectures of leading researchers given at the 8th edition of the International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication and Software Systems, SFM 2008, held in Bertinoro, Italy in June 2008. SFM 2008 was devoted to formal techniques for computational systems biology and covered several aspects of the field, including computational models, calculi and logics for biological systems, and verification and simulation methods. The first part of this volume comprises nine papers based on regular lectures, the second part of this volume comprises five papers based on talks given by people involved in the Italian BISCA research project on Bio-Inspired Systems and Calculi with Applications.

The complexity of living organisms surpasses our unaided habilities of analysis. Hence, computational and mathematical methods are necessary for increasing our understanding of biological systems. At the same time, there has been a phenomenal recent progress allowing the application of novel formal methods to new domains. This progress has spurred a conspicuous optimism in computational biology. This optimism, in turn, has promoted a rapid increase in collaboration between specialists of biology with specialists of computer science. Through sheer complexity, however, many important biological problems are at present intractable, and it is not clear whether we will ever be able to solve such problems. We are in the process of learning what kind of model and what kind of analysis and synthesis techniques to use for a particular problem. Some existing formalisms have been readily used in biological problems, others have been adapted to biological needs, and still others have been especially developed for biological systems. This Research Topic has examples of cases (1) employing existing methods, (2) adapting methods to biology, and (3) developing new methods. We can also see discrete and Boolean models, and the use of both simulators and model checkers. Synthesis is exemplified by manual and by machine-learning methods. We hope that the articles collected in this Research Topic will stimulate new research.

Thisvolumecontainstheproceedingsofthe?rstinternationalmeetingonFormal Methods in Systems Biology, held at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK, June 4–5, 2008. While there are several venues that cover computational methods in systems biology,there is to date no single conference that brings together the application of the range of formal methods in biology. Therefore, convening such a meeting could prove extremely productive. The purpose of this meeting was to identify techniques for the speci?cation, development and veri?cation of biological m- els.Italsofocusedonthedesignoftoolstoexecuteandanalyzebiologicalmodels in ways that can signi?cantly advance our understanding of biological systems. As a forum for this discussion we invited key scientists in the area of formal methods to this unique meeting. Although this was a one-o? meeting, we are exploring the possibility of this forming the ?rst of what might become an annual conference. Presentations at the meeting were by invitation only; future meetings are expected to operate on a submission and review basis. The Steering Committee and additional referees reviewed the invited papers. Each submission was evaluated by at least two referees. The volume includes nine invited contributions. Formal Methods in Systems Biology 2008 was made possible by the cont- bution and dedication ofmany people. First of all,we wouldlike to thank allthe authors who submitted papers. Secondly, we would like to thank our additional invited speakers and participants. We would also like to thank the members of the Steering Committee for their valuable comments. Finally, we ackno- edge the help of the administrative and technical sta? at the MicrosoftResearch Cambridge lab.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology, CMSB 2006, held in Trento, Italy, in October 2006. The 22 fully revised papers presented together with 2 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 68 submissions. The papers present a variety of techniques from computer sciences, such as language design, concurrency theory, software engineering, and formal methods.

This book explores the use of concepts and tools from theoretical computer science to tackle the complexity of cell processes. In a unified framework, it presents the different modeling formalisms of systems biology, emphasizing their formal relationships by abstraction functions and putting them into practice for building predictive models of cell functions. With exercises and computational models, the book reflects the author’s many years of researching, developing, and applying computer science methods in systems biology.