Component-based software architecture for biosystem reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is defined as the process where the internal structures and dynamics of a given system are inferred and analyzed from external observations and relevant knowledge. The first part of this paper surveys existing techniques for biosystem reverse engineering. Network structure inference techniques such as Correlation Matrix Construction (CMC), Boolean network and Bayesian network-based methods are explained. After the numeric and logical simulation techniques are briefly described, several representative working software tools were introduced. The second part presents our component-based software architecture for biosystem reverse engineering. After three design principles are established, a loosely coupled federation architecture consisting of 11 autonomous components is proposed along with their respective functions.