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Chemotaxis and Chemokinesis of Living and Non-living Objects

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Advances in Unconventional Computing

Part of the book series: Emergence, Complexity and Computation ((ECC,volume 23))

Abstract

One of the fundamental properties of living organisms is the ability to sense and respond to changes in their environment by movement. If a motile cell senses soluble molecules and follows along a concentration gradient to the source, or if it moves away from a source of undesirable chemicals, e.g. repellent, toxin, it is displaying a directional movement called positive or negative chemotaxis, respectively. This phenomenon is well-known to biologists and intensively studied in living systems. In contrast chemokinesis is a change in movement due to environmental input but the resulting movement is non-vectorial and can be considered directionally random. Recently, in the last ten years, few laboratories started to focus on the movement properties of artificial constructs, including the directional movement of non-living objects in chemical gradients. This chapter will focus on chemotaxis and chemokinesis of natural and synthetic systems that may provide chemical platforms for unconventional computing.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the European Commission FP7 Future and Emerging Technologies Proactive: 318671 (MICREAgents) and 611640 (EVOBLISS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jitka Čejková, To Quyen Nguyenová & František Štěpánek

  2. Laboratory for Artificial Biology, Centre for Integrative Biology (CIBIO), University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Silvia Holler & Martin M. Hanczyc

  3. Architect (ARB, RIBA), 200 Year Continuum, Astudio Architecture, London, UK

    Christian Kerrigan

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  1. Jitka Čejková
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  3. To Quyen Nguyenová
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  6. Martin M. Hanczyc
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Correspondence to Jitka Čejková .

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    Andrew Adamatzky

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Čejková, J., Holler, S., Nguyenová, T.Q., Kerrigan, C., Štěpánek, F., Hanczyc, M.M. (2017). Chemotaxis and Chemokinesis of Living and Non-living Objects. In: Adamatzky, A. (eds) Advances in Unconventional Computing. Emergence, Complexity and Computation, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33921-4_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33921-4_11

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