Describing Membrane Computations with a Chemical Calculus

Abstract

Membrane systems are nature motivated computational models inspired by certain basic features of biological cells and their membranes. They are examples of the chemical computational paradigm which describes computation in terms of chemical solutions where molecules interact according to rules de ning their reaction capabilities. Chemical models can be presented by rewriting systems based on multiset manipulations, and they are usually given as a kind of chemical calculus which might also allow nondeterministic and non-sequential computations. Here we study membrane systems from the point of view of the chemical computing paradigm and show how computations of membrane systems can be described by such a chemical calculus.