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rebop

rebop is a fast stochastic simulator for well-mixed chemical reaction networks.

Performance and ergonomics are taken very seriously. For this reason, two independent APIs are provided to describe and simulate reaction networks:

The macro DSL

It currently only supports reaction rates defined by the law of mass action. The following macro defines a dimerization reaction network naturally:

rust use rebop::define_system; define_system! { r_tx r_tl r_dim r_decay_mRNA r_decay_prot; Dimers { gene, mRNA, protein, dimer } transcription : gene => gene + mRNA @ r_tx translation : mRNA => mRNA + protein @ r_tl dimerization : 2 protein => dimer @ r_dim decay_mRNA : mRNA => @ r_decay_mRNA decay_protein : protein => @ r_decay_prot }

To simulate the system, put this definition in a rust code file and instanciate the problem, set the parameters, the initial values, and launch the simulation:

rust let mut problem = Dimers::new(); problem.r_tx = 25.0; problem.r_tl = 1000.0; problem.r_dim = 0.001; problem.r_decay_mRNA = 0.1; problem.r_decay_prot = 1.0; problem.gene = 1; problem.advance_until(1.0); println!("t = {}: dimer = {}", problem.t, problem.dimer);

Or for the classic SIR example:

```rust use rebop::define_system;

definesystem! { rinf rheal; SIR { S, I, R } infection : S + I => 2 I @ rinf healing : I => R @ r_heal }

fn main() { let mut problem = SIR::new(); problem.rinf = 1e-4; problem.rheal = 0.01; problem.S = 999; problem.I = 1; println!("time,S,I,R"); for t in 0..250 { problem.advance_until(t as f64); println!("{},{},{},{}", problem.t, problem.S, problem.I, problem.R); } } ```

which can produce an output similar to this one:

Typical SIR output

The traditional API

The function-based API allows models to be defined programmatically in Rust or in Python. If one programs in Rust, one should generally prefer the macro DSL, unless one needs more complex rates, or if the model needs to be defined programmatically. The SIR model is defined as:

```rust use rebop::index_enum; use rebop::gillespie::{AsIndex, Gillespie, Rate, SRate};

indexenum! { enum SIR { S, I, R } } let mut sir = Gillespie::new([999, 1, 0]); // S + I => 2 I with rate 1e-4 sir.addreaction( Rate::new(1e-4, &[SRate::LMA(SIR::S), SRate::LMA(SIR::I)]), [-1, 1, 0]); // I => R with rate 0.01 sir.add_reaction(Rate::new(0.01, &[SRate::LMA(SIR::I)]), [0, -1, 1]);

println!("time,S,I,R"); for t in 0..250 { sir.advanceuntil(t as f64); println!("{},{},{},{}", sir.gettime(), sir.getspecies(&SIR::S), sir.getspecies(&SIR::I), sir.get_species(&SIR::R)); } ```

Python bindings

This API shines through the Python bindings which allow one to define a model easily:

```python import rebop

sir = rebop.Gillespie() sir.addreaction(1e-4, ['S', 'I'], ['I', 'I']) sir.addreaction(0.01, ['I'], ['R']) print(sir)

times, sol = sir.run({'S': 999, 'I': 1}, tmax=250, nb_steps=250) ```

While a pip package is being worked on, to run this Python file, you must currently first compile rebop with cargo build --release and copy or link the library next to the script: ln -s target/release/librebop.so rebop.so.

Performance

Performance is taken very seriously, and as a result, rebop outperforms every other package and programming language that we tried.

Disclaimer: Most of this software currently contains much more features than rebop (e.g. spatial models, custom reaction rates, etc.). Some of these features might have required them to make compromises on speed. Moreover, as much as we tried to keep the comparison fair, some return too much or too little data, or write them on disk. The baseline that we tried to approach for all these programs is the following: the model was just modified, we want to simulate it N times and print regularly spaced measurement points. This means that we always include initialization or (re-)compilation time if applicable. We think that it is the most typical use-case of a researcher who works on the model. This benchmark methods allows to record both the initialization time (y-intercept) and the simulation time per simulation (slope).

Many small benchmarks on toy examples are tracked to guide the development. To compare the performance with other software, we used a real-world model of low-medium size (9 species and 16 reactions): the Vilar oscillator (Mechanisms of noise-resistance in genetic oscillators, Vilar et al., PNAS 2002). Here, we simulate this model from t=0 to t=200, reporting the state at time intervals of 1 time unit.

Vilar oscillator benchmark

We can see that rebop's macro DSL is the fastest of all, both in time per simulation, and with compilation time included. The second fastest is rebop's traditional API invoked by convenience through the Python bindings.

Features to come

Features probably not to come

Benchmark ideas

Similar software

Maintained

Seem unmaintained

License: MIT