The rise of single-cell data highlights the need for a nondeterministic view of gene expression, while offering new opportunities regarding gene regulatory network inference. We recently introduced two strategies that specifically exploit time-course data, where single-cell profiling is performed after a stimulus: HARISSA, a mechanistic network model with a highly efficient simulation procedure, and CARDAMOM, a scalable inference method seen as model calibration. In that expose, I present more specifically the second method, and explain how the same model driven by transcriptional bursting can be used simultaneously as an inference tool, to reconstruct biologically relevant networks, and as a simulation tool, to generate realistic transcriptional profiles emerging from gene interactions.