Stochastic modeling of biological reactions

Abstract

Several biological systems comprise of reaction networks where the low number of molecules makes it inappropriate to completely characterize system behavior using a continuous approach. Biological systems are also characterized by discrete states (e.g. infected, dead) that are not amenable to the use of a continuous descriptor. This review discusses the need for adopting a discrete stochastic modeling approach for analyzing biological reactions networks. Various stochastic simulation procedures and theoretical studies are presented. The challenges in the theoretical and computational analysis of discrete stochastic biological reaction networks are discussed.