Computing with motile bio-agents

Dan V. Nicolau Jr.; Kevin Burrage; Dan V. Nicolau

doi:10.1117/12.707691

14 December 2006 Computing with motile bio-agents

Dan V. Nicolau Jr., Kevin Burrage, Dan V. Nicolau

Proceedings Volume 6416, Biomedical Applications of Micro- and Nanoengineering III; 64160S (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.707691
Event: SPIE Smart Materials, Nano- and Micro-Smart Systems, 2006, Adelaide, Australia

Abstract

We describe a model of computation of the parallel type, which we call 'computing with bio-agents', based on the concept that motions of biological objects such as bacteria or protein molecular motors in confined spaces can be regarded as computations. We begin with the observation that the geometric nature of the physical structures in which model biological objects move modulates the motions of the latter. Consequently, by changing the geometry, one can control the characteristic trajectories of the objects; on the basis of this, we argue that such systems are computing devices. We investigate the computing power of mobile bio-agent systems and show that they are computationally universal in the sense that they are capable of computing any Boolean function in parallel. We argue also that using appropriate conditions, bio-agent systems can solve NP-complete problems in probabilistic polynomial time.

Citation Download Citation

Dan V. Nicolau Jr., Kevin Burrage, and Dan V. Nicolau "Computing with motile bio-agents", Proc. SPIE 6416, Biomedical Applications of Micro- and Nanoengineering III, 64160S (14 December 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.707691

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