Enhancing reaction systems: a process algebraic approach

In the area of Natural Computing, reaction systems are a qualitative abstraction inspired by the functioning of living cells, suitable to model the main mechanisms of biochemical reactions. This model has already been applied and extended successfully to various areas of research. Reaction systems interact with the environment represented by the context, and pose problems of implementation, as it is a new computation model. In this paper we consider the link-calculus, which allows to model multiparty interaction in concurrent systems, and show that it allows to embed reaction systems, by representing the behaviour of each entity and preserving faithfully their features. We show the correctness and completeness of our embedding. We illustrate our framework by showing how to embed a lac operon regulatory network. Finally, our framework can contribute to increase the expressiveness of reaction systems, by exploiting the interaction among different reaction systems.