An optimal control approach to probabilistic Boolean networks

External control of some genes in a genetic regulatory network is useful for avoiding undesirable states associated with some diseases. For this purpose, a number of stochastic optimal control approaches have been proposed. Probabilistic Boolean networks (PBNs) as powerful tools for modeling gene regulatory systems have attracted considerable attention in systems biology. In this paper, we deal with a problem of optimal intervention in a PBN with the help of the theory of discrete time Markov decision process. Specifically, we first formulate a control model for a PBN as a first passage model for discrete time Markov decision processes and then find, using a value iteration algorithm, optimal effective treatments with the minimal expected first passage time over the space of all possible treatments. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, an example is also displayed.