P Systems with Active Cells

Abstract

P systems with active membranes is a widely studied framework within the field of Membrane Computing since the creation of the discipline. The abstraction of the structure and behavior of living cells is reflected in the tree-like hierarchy and the kinds of rules that can be used in these kinds of systems. Resembling the organization and communication between cells within tissues that form organs, tissue-like P systems were defined as their abstractions, using symport/antiport rules, that is, moving and exchanging elements from one cell to another one. All the cells are located in an environment where there exist an arbitrary number of some elements. Lately, symport/antiport rules have been used in the framework of cell-like membrane systems in order to study their computational power. Interesting results have been reached, since they act similarly to their counterparts in the framework of tissue P systems. Here, the use of the former defined rules (that is, evolution, communication, dissolution and division/separation rules) is considered, but not working with a tree-like structure. Some remarks about choosing good semantics are given.