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From
•>>October 2003 Andrei
and Gheorghe Paun answer
a few questions about this month's emerging research front
in
field of Computer Science: Computer Science
Article: "The power of communication: P systems with symport/antiport"
Authors: Paun,
A;Paun, G
Journal: NEW GENERATION COMPUT, 20: (3) 295-305 2002
Addresses:
Univ Western Ontario, Dept Comp Sci, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada.
Univ Western Ontario, Dept Comp Sci, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada.
Romanian Acad, Inst Math, Bucharest 70700, Romania.
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|
 Why
do you think your paper is highly cited?
It has opened a new research vista in membrane computing, well
motivated from a biological point of view, elegant from a
mathematical point of view, computationally powerful (universal);
moreover, the use of symport/antiport rules leads in a natural  way
both to the possibility to consider (language) accepting computing
devices, rather than generative devices as is usual in membrane
computing, and to a possibility to consider tissue-like P systems,
with cells placed in the nodes of an arbitrary graph. Then, by
itself, the area of membrane computing is rather vivid, very quickly
developing.
Does
it describe a new discovery or new methodology that's useful to
others?
We have here a completely new type of evolution rules in a
membrane system, specifying not how the objects (chemicals) evolve,
but how they may pass across membranes. The rules used mimic the
biological processes of symport and antiport, and the obtained
device computes by communication only through changing the place of
objects in the compartments of a membrane structure and not by
changing the objects themselves. Computing at the level of Turing
machines by communication only seems to have a philosophical
meaning.
Could
you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?
Membrane computing is a new branch of natural computing which
tries to abstract computing models from the structure and the
functioning of living cells. The main ingredients of the obtained
models (called P systems) are (1) a hierarchical membrane structure,
in the compartments of which (2) multisets of objects evolve
according to given (3) rules. In general, these rules formalize the
chemical reactions which take place in the compartments of a cell.
The initial motivation of this theory came from computer science,
but recently applications to biology have also started to appear.
Details about membrane computing can be found at the web address: http://psystems.disco.unimib.it.
In biology one knows of an interesting case of transferring
chemicals across membranes, in a coupled manner: when two chemicals
pass through a membrane together in the same direction one says that
we have a symport, when the chemicals pass in opposite
directions we have an antiport. Symport and antiport rules
can be used for changing the configuration of a P system (hence for
computing), by moving objects across membranes. In this way, we
compute by communication only; moreover, we compute whatever a Turing
machine can compute, observing the conservation law, using P
systems of a rather reduced form, and with all these ingredients
directly inspired from biology.
How
did you become involved in this research?
Both of us have worked in (DNA and) membrane computing for
several years, but we become acquainted with the notions of symport
and antiport during the Workshop on Membrane Computing held in 2001
in Curtea de Arges, Romania, when a biologist, (Dr. Ioan I. Ardelean,
of the Institute of Biological Sciences, Romania), had presented
these notions during a cell biology tutorial for the workshop
participants.
Andrei Paun, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Institute for Micromanufacturing
Louisiana Tech University
Ruston, LA , USA
Dr. Gheorghe Paun
Senior Researcher (Corresponding Member of the Romanian Academy)
Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy
Bucharest, Romania
and
Member of the Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics
Rovira i Virgili University
Tarragona, Spain
Read a comment by Gheorghe Paun about his Fast Breaking
Paper in February
2003.
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