Abstract
In 1952, Turing outlined computational processes in the morphogenesis [8], thus thinking of the biological evolution of an organism as a consequence of the computation that it can perform. Following Turing’s idea on morphogenesis, many biological processes have been recently analysed from a computational standpoint. In 1995, Bray [2] argued that a single protein is a computational or information carrying element, being able to convert input signals into an output signal. Evolution had already been associated with computation many years before, by von Neumann and Burks [9], who constructed a self-replicating cellular automaton with the aim of developing synthetic models of a living organism. Starting from this concept, in this work we propose a relation between computation and metabolism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Angione, C., et al.: Computing with metabolic machines. In: Voronkov, A. (ed.) Turing-100. EPiC Series, vol. 10, pp. 1–15 (2012)
Bray, D., et al.: Protein molecules as computational elements in living cells. Nature 376(6538), 307–312 (1995)
Costanza, J., et al.: Robust design of microbial strains. Bioinformatics 28(23), 3097–3104 (2012)
Cutello, V., Narzisi, G., Nicosia, G.: A class of pareto archived evolution strategy algorithms using immune inspired operators for ab-initio protein structure prediction. In: Rothlauf, F., et al. (eds.) EvoWorkshops 2005. LNCS, vol. 3449, pp. 54–63. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Cutello, V., et al.: A multi-objective evolutionary approach to the protein structure prediction problem. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 3(6), 139–151 (2006)
Orth, J.D., et al.: A comprehensive genome-scale reconstruction of Escherichia coli metabolism-2011. Molecular Systems Biology 77(Article number 535), 1–9 (2011)
Reed, J., et al.: An expanded genome-scale model of escherichia coli k-12 (ijr904 gsm/gpr). Genome Biology 4(9), R54 (2003)
Turing, A.M.: The chemical basis of morphogenesis. Bulletin of mathematical biology 52(1), 153–197 (1990)
Von Neumann, J., Burks, A.W., et al.: Theory of self-reproducing automata (1966)
Yim, H.R., et al.: Metabolic engineering of escherichia coli for direct production of 1,4-butanediol. Nature Chemical Biology 7(7), 445–452 (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Costanza, J., Zammataro, L., Nicosia, G. (2014). Programming Living Machines: The Case Study of Escherichia Coli . In: Duff, A., Lepora, N.F., Mura, A., Prescott, T.J., Verschure, P.F.M.J. (eds) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8608. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09435-9_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09435-9_35
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09434-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09435-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)