Abstraction of biochemical reaction systems on polytopes

Analysis of the dynamic behavior of large-scale biochemical reaction systems can be facilitated by abstraction followed by model checking. A biochemical reaction system can be approximated by a multi-affine system or an affine system on a rectangle. Either of these systems can be abstracted to an automaton. Model checking can then be employed to determine whether the dynamic behavior of the automaton satisfies specific properties. A relation between the system and its abstraction is proved; it is an over-approximation: any discrete state trajectory of the abstraction of the continuous state trajectory is contained in the automaton, but the automaton may contain more behavior. for which no correspondent continuous trajectory exists.