We present the MIM calculus, a modeling formalism with a strong biological
basis, which provides biologically-meaningful operators for representing the
interaction capabilities of molecular species. The operators of the calculus
are inspired by the reaction symbols used in Molecular Interaction Maps (MIMs),
a diagrammatic notation used by biologists. Models of the calculus can be
easily derived from MIM diagrams, for which an unambiguous and executable
interpretation is thus obtained. We give a formal definition of the syntax and
semantics of the MIM calculus, and we study properties of the formalism. A case
study is also presented to show the use of the calculus for modeling
biomolecular networks.Comment: 15 pages; 8 figures; To be published on EPTCS, proceedings of MeCBIC
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