Computing with energy and chemical reactions

  • Authors:

  • Alberto Leporati;Daniela Besozzi;Paolo Cazzaniga;Dario Pescini;Claudio Ferretti

  • Affiliations:

  • Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano --- Bicocca, Milano, Italy 20126;Dipartimento di Informatica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy 20135;Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano --- Bicocca, Milano, Italy 20126;Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano --- Bicocca, Milano, Italy 20126;Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano --- Bicocca, Milano, Italy 20126

  • Venue:
  • Natural Computing: an international journal
  • Year:
  • 2010

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Taking inspiration from some laws of Nature--energy transformation and chemical reactions--we consider two different paradigms of computation in the framework of Membrane Computing. We first study the computational power of energy-based P systems, a model of membrane systems where a fixed amount of energy is associated with each object and the rules transform objects by manipulating their energy. We show that if we assign local priorities to the rules, then energy-based P systems are as powerful as Turing machines; otherwise, they can be simulated by vector addition systems, and hence are not universal. Then, we consider stochastic membrane systems where computations are performed through chemical networks. We show how molecular species and chemical reactions can be used to describe and simulate the functioning of Fredkin gates and circuits. We conclude the paper with some research topics related to computing with energy-based P systems and with chemical reactions.