The power of communication: P systems with symport/antiport

Abstract

In the attempt to have a framework where the computation is done by communication only, we consider the biological phenomenon of trans-membrane transport of couples of chemicals (one say symport when two chemicals pass together through a membrane, in the same direction, and antiport when two chemicals pass simultaneously through a membrane, in opposite directions). Surprisingly enough, membrane systems without changing (evolving) the used objects and with the communication based on rules of this type are computationally complete, and this result is achieved even for pairs of communicated objects (as encountered in biology). Five membranes are used; the number of membranes is reduced to two if more than two chemicals may collaborate when passing through membranes.

Using Membrane Computing for Effective Homology

“…In the following steps, the P system applies rules of types R 16 , R 17 , R 18 . For example, when system arrives to the configuration 19, the following rules of type R 18 can be applied between others (see Fig.…”

“…When the protein and the ion move in the same direction, the process is called symport; when they move in opposite directions, the process is called antiport. Symport/antiport rules were introduced in Membrane Computing in [18] and nowadays are widely used in the flow of information in the tissue-like paradigm. In this paper, we encode the information stored in an image as a set of chemicals placed in a virtual compartment (in a cell) and we use symport/antiport rules to deal with this information.…”

Client–Server P Systems in Modeling Molecular Interaction

“…There is a number of results on this type of P systems [11]; generally, they take into consideration the number of membranes and the weight of the port (i.e. the number of objects involved in an antiport or symport rule).…”

Process Calculi Abstractions for Biology

“…A computation is obtained starting from an initial configuration of membrane and objects and then applying evolution rules. The research in this area is currently very active and a comprehensive bibliography includes hundreds of papers [51], some of them aiming at finding formal properties (e.g., [53,52]) and some of them working on systems biology applications (e.g., [24,56]). …”