The Symbiont project: Symbolic methods for biological networks

The international interdisciplinary SYMBIONT project ranges from mathematics via computer science to systems biology, with a balanced team of researchers from those fields. At the present stage the project has a clear focus on fundamental research on mathematical methods, and prototypes in software. Results are systematically benchmarked against models from computational biology databases. We summarize the motivation and aims for the project, and report on existing results by the consortium and first activities. The project website can be found at www.symbiont-project.org.