Description : The relationship between Computer Science (ranging from very theoretical to very practical) and biology is rather fascinating: 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. Examples include finite automata and their link to neural nets (McCulloch, Pitts, Kleene) where the roots of the modern neural networks area are also found, genetic algorithms and, more generally, evolutionary computing/programming, with their declared intention to mimic evolution at the genetic level. Several other biologically inspired domains in Computer Science are recently very active: one such domain is the area of membrane computing that was recently selected by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as a fast “emerging research front” in Computer Science. 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 a 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 architecture and difficulties in miniaturization. Because of the continuous miniaturization we have all witnessed in recent years, the quantum barrier is close, and therefore, packing more and more processors onto the same chip raises serious technical problems (for instance, related to control, communication, and energy dissipation). This could increase the cost of smaller processors by several orders of magnitude making the silicon-based computers no longer commercially viable. A possible solution to this foreseen limitation of silicon processors, and even a possible way to supplement the classic computer, 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. P systems can be a possible step in the “main post-genomic task: modeling/simulating the living cell” (M. Holkombe, Y. Tomita, etc.).
Principal Investigator: Paun, Andrei -- Computer Science
Collaborators:
Funding Agencies: National Science Foundation
| Start Period: 09/01/2005 |
End Period: 08/31/2008 |
November 21st, 2009
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