Time Delays in Membrane Systems and Petri Nets

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between timed membrane systems and timed Petri nets with localities, showing they have equivalent expressive power but enhanced flexibility for modeling time-critical molecular processes.

Contribution

It establishes a formal link and operational correspondence between timed membrane systems and timed Petri nets with localities, highlighting their similar expressive capabilities.

Findings

Timing does not increase expressive power in either formalism.

Both formalisms are more flexible for molecular phenomena involving time.

A formal link and operational correspondence are proven between the two models.

Abstract

Timing aspects in formalisms with explicit resources and parallelism are investigated, and it is presented a formal link between timed membrane systems and timed Petri nets with localities. For both formalisms, timing does not increase the expressive power; however both timed membrane systems and timed Petri nets are more flexible in describing molecular phenomena where time is a critical resource. We establish a link between timed membrane systems and timed Petri nets with localities, and prove an operational correspondence between them.