A Boolean network control algorithm guided by forward dynamic programming

Control problem in a biological system is the problem of finding an interventional policy for changing the state of the biological system from an undesirable state, e.g. disease, into a desirable healthy state. Boolean networks are utilized as a mathematical model for gene regulatory networks. This paper provides an algorithm to solve the control problem in Boolean networks. The proposed algorithm is implemented and applied on two biological systems: T-cell receptor network and Drosophila melanogaster network. Results show that the proposed algorithm works faster in solving the control problem over these networks, while having similar accuracy, in comparison to previous exact methods. Source code and a simple web service of the proposed algorithm is available at http://goliaei.ir/net-control/www/.