Description :  

A P-System is a type of “wet ware,” or a computer using a cell instead of silicon. The relationship between computer science (ranging from theoretical to practical) and biology is a rather fascinating one: each domain has helped, even influenced, the other domain in an essential manner. Many important classes of models of computer science found their inspiration in biology. While evolutionary computing and neural networks are biologically inspired and implemented on the usual silicon computer, membrane computing has a still more ambitious goal, that of using bio-ware for carrying out computations.  The need for such a novel means for implementing computations, a “wet computer,” comes from the inherent limitations of silicon computers, related to their sequential architectures and difficulties in miniaturization. 

A possible solution to this foreseen limitation of silicon processors, and even a possible way to supplement the classic computers, at least for certain problems, is suggested by biology.  The cell, the building-block of the organisms, is an extremely complicated system, highly adaptive with an unbelievable degree of self-configuration and self-maintenance.  The membrane computing area was started with the ambitious goal to perform computations using these biological building blocks, the cells.  Its goal is to abstract a computing model from the structure and functioning of the living cell. Initiated only a few years ago, the domain has been vividly investigated, mainly from a mathematical point of view. There are many types of membrane systems (also called P systems), many of them computationally complete, many of them able to solve hard problems in polynomial time (by making use of an exponential space created in a natural way, for instance, by cell division, or string replication). No experiment of computing in a cell has yet been reported, but the domain is continuously growing and is currently trying to return to the originating area, biology.  We view the membrane computing area as a good candidate for a cell simulation effort. 

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Principal Investigator:  Paun, Andrei  --  Computer Science

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Collaborators:  

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Funding Agencies:  National Science Foundation

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Amount Awarded:  $150,000

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Start Period:  08/01/2005

End Period:  07/31/2008