A Logical Characterization of Robustness, Mutants and Species in Colonies of Agents

We study a modeling framework and computational paradigm called Colonies of Syn- chronizing Agents (CSAs), which abstracts intracellular and intercellular mechanisms of biological tissues. The model is based on a multiset of agents (cells) in a com- mon environment. Each agent has a local contents, stored in the form of a multiset of atomic objects, updated by multiset rewriting rules which may act on individual agents (intracellular action) or synchronize the contents of pairs of agents (intercellu-lar action). In this paper we investigate dynamic properties of CSAs, by means of temporal logic, and we give a logical characterization of some notions inspired by evolutionary biology such as robustness, mutants and species. We reveal the relation that exists between the concept of robustness for CSAs and the bisimulation relation on colonies. We also present some decidability results for particular cases of robustness. Preprint of an article submitted for consideration in International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science ©2008 copyright World Scientific Publishing Company [http://www.worldscinet.com/ijfcs/ijfcs.shtml