University of Dortmund, Dempt. of Computer Science, Chair of Systemsanalysis (LS XI)
Emergent Computation by Catalytic Reactions
Nanotechnology, 7: 1 - 8, 1996
- presented at:
-
The Fourth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology
- November 9-11, 1995, in Palo Alto, California
Abstract
Recently, biochemical systems have been shown to possess interesting computational
properties. In a parallel development, the chemical computation metaphor is
becoming more and more frequently used as part of the emergent computation paradigm
in Computer Science. We review in this contribution the idea behind the chemical
computational metaphor and outline its relevance for nanotechnology.
We set up a
simulated reaction system of mathematical objects and examine its dynamics by
computer experiments. Typical problems of computer science, like sorting, parity
checking or prime number computation are placed within this context.
The implications of
this approach for nanotechnology, parallel computers based on molecular devices
and DNA-RNA-protein information processing are discussed.