Reaction Systems and Enabling Equivalence

Reaction systems were introduced in order to provide an abstract model for the study of the biochemical processes that take place in the living cell. Processes of this kind are the result of the interactions between reactions and may be influenced by the environment. Thus, reaction systems can be considered as a model of (interactive) computation. In previous works, various equivalences defined directly on reaction systems and processes had been proposed and compared. These equivalences were all based on functional equivalence that compares a system’s behaviour at every stage of its execution. In this paper, in contrast, we investigate enabling equivalence which focuses on the system behaviour only in specific stages of its evolution, namely those where all of its reactions are active. We discuss the effect of such an approach and, in particular, its relationship to a transition system representation of the system’s behaviour.