Emergent computation by catalytic reactions

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, such as 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.