No abstract

The advent of the computer and computer science, and in particular virtual reality, offers new experiment possibilities with numerical simulations and introduces a new type of investigation for the complex systems study : the in virtuo experiment.This work lies on the framework of multi-agent systems. We propose a generic model for systems biology based on reification of the interactions, on a concept of organization and on a multi-model approach. By ``reification'' we understand that interactions are considered as autonomous agents. The aim has been to combine the systemic paradigm and the virtual reality to provide an application able to collect, simulate, experiment and understand the knowledge owned by different biologists working around an interdisciplinary subject. In that case, we have been focused on the urticaria disease understanding.The method permits to integrate different natures of model. We have modeled biochemical reactions, molecular diffusion, cell organisations and mechanical interactions. It also permits to embed different expert system modeling methods like fuzzy cognitive maps.