Freeman Dyson, in his 1985 Tarner Lectures, asked: "Is Life one thing or two things? Is there a logical connection between metabolism and replication?".

As the study of the genomes and proteomes have become amenable to computational analysis to decipher "part-lists" of life (e.g. genes, mRNA's, proteins, promoters, etc.), it may now be possible to address Dyson's questions with algorithmic tools based on dynamical systems, control theory and computational logic to study complex metabolic pathways.

This talk introduces the concept of algebraic differential automata (ADA) systems to model biological processes, and how we plan to use them to interpret experimental data modulated by regulatory, metabolic and intercellular signaling processes.