Pattern formation and optimization in army ant raids
Artificial Life
The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks
The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks
The computer and the brain
Self-Organization in Biological Systems
Self-Organization in Biological Systems
The Emergence of Cellular Computing
Computer
Genetic circuit building blocks for cellular computation, communications, and signal processing
Natural Computing: an international journal
The Geometry of Evolution: Adaptive Landscapes and Theoretical Morphospaces
The Geometry of Evolution: Adaptive Landscapes and Theoretical Morphospaces
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Computation is an intrinsic attribute of biological entities. All of them gather and process information and respond in predictable ways to an uncertain external environment. Are these computations similar to those performed by artificial systems? Can a living computer be constructed following standard engineering practices? Despite the similarities between molecular networks associated to information processing and the wiring diagrams used to represent electronic circuits, major differences arise. Such differences are specially relevant while engineering molecular circuits in order to build novel functionalities. Among others, wiring molecular components within a cell becomes a great challenge as soon as the complexity of the circuit becomes larger than simple gates. An alternative approach has been recently introduced based on a non-standard approach to cellular computation. By breaking some standard assumptions of engineering design, it allows the synthesis of multicellular engineered circuits able to perform complex functions and open a novel form of computation. Here we review previous studies dealing with both natural and synthetic forms of computation. We compare different systems spanning many spatial and temporal scales and outline a possible "space" of biological forms of computation. We suggest that a novel approach to build synthetic devices using multicellular consortia allows expanding this space in new directions.