Molecular noise, which arises from the randomness of the discrete events in the cell, significantly influences fundamental
biological processes. Discrete -state continuous-time stochastic models (CTMC) can be used to describe such effects, but the
calculation of the probabilities of certain events is computationally expensive.
We present a comparison of two analysis approaches for CTMC. On one hand, we estimate the probabilities of interest using
repeated Gillespie simulation and determine the statistical accuracy that we obtain. On the other hand, we apply a numerical
reachability analysis that approximates the probability distributions of the system at several time instances. We use examples
of cellular processes to demonstrate the superiority of the reachability analysis if accurate results are required.
This research was supported in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant 205321-111840 and by the Excellence
Cluster on Multimodal Computing and Interaction.