From Watson-Crick L systems to Darwinian P systems

  • Authors:

  • Erzsé/bet Csuhaj-Varjú/;Carlos Martí/n-Vide;Gheorgh Pă/aun;Arto Salomaa

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kende u. 13-17, 1111 Budapest, Hungary (E-mail: csuhaj@sztaki.hu);Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics, Rovira i Virgili University, Pl. Imperial Tá/rraco 1, 43005 Tarragona, Spain (E-mail: cmv@astor.urv.es);Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics, Rovira i Virgili University, Pl. Imperial Tá/rraco 1, 43005 Tarragona, Spain&semi/ Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, P.O. Box 1-764, ...;Turku Centre for Computer Science, Lemminkä/isenkatu 14A, 20520 Turku, Finland (E-mail: asalomaa@cs.utu.fi)

  • Venue:
  • Natural Computing: an international journal
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Watson-Crick L systems are language generating devices making use ofWatson-Crick complementarity, a fundamental concept of DNA computing.These devices are Lindenmayer systems enriched with a trigger forcomplementarity transition: if a ``bad'' string is obtained, then thederivation continues with its complement which is always a ``good''string. Membrane systems or P systems are distributed parallel computingmodels which were abstracted from the structure and the way offunctioning of living cells. In this paper, we first interpret theresults known about the computational completeness of Watson-Crick E0Lsystems in terms of membrane systems, then we introduce a related way ofcontrolling the evolution in P systems, by using the triggers not in theoperational manner (i.e., turning to the complement in a ``bad''configuration), but in a ``Darwinian'' sense: if a ``bad'' configurationis reached, then the system ``dies'', that is, no result is obtained.The triggers (actually, the checkers) are given as finite state multisetautomata. We investigate the computational power of these P systems.Their computational completeness is proved, even for systems withnon-cooperative rules, working in the non-synchronized way, andcontrolled by only two finite state checkers; if the systems work in thesynchronized mode, then one checker for each system suffices to obtainthe computational completeness.