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On P Systems as a Modelling Tool for Biological Systems

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Membrane Computing (WMC 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3850))

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Abstract

We introduce a variant of P systems where rules have associated a real number providing a measure for the “intrinsic reactivity”of the rule and roughly corresponding to the kinetic coefficient which, in bio-chemistry, is usually associated to each molecular reaction. The behaviour of these P systems is then defined according to a strategy which, in each step, randomly selects the next rule to be applied depending upon a certain distribution of probabilities. As an application, we present a P system model of the quorum sensing regulatory networks of the bacterium Vibrio Fischeri. In this respect, a formalisation of the network in terms of P systems is provided and some simulation results concerning the behaviour of a colony of such bacteria are reported. We also briefly describe the implementation techniques adopted by pointing out the generality of our approach which appears to be fairly independent from the particular choice of P system variant and the language used to implement it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield, Regent Court, Portobello Street, Sheffield, S1 4DP, UK

    Francesco Bernardini, Marian Gheorghe & Ravie C. Muniyandi

  2. Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Research Group, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK

    Natalio Krasnogor

  3. Research Group on Natural Computing, Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Seville, Avda. Reina Mercedes, 41012, Sevilla, Spain

    Mario J. Pérez-Jímenez & Francisco José Romero-Campero

Authors
  1. Francesco Bernardini
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  2. Marian Gheorghe
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  3. Natalio Krasnogor
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  4. Ravie C. Muniyandi
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  5. Mario J. Pérez-Jímenez
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  6. Francisco José Romero-Campero
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Informatics, Vienna University of Technology, Favoritenstr. 9, 1040, Vienna, Austria

    Rudolf Freund

  2. Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, PO Box 1-764, 014700, Bucureşti, Romania

    Gheorghe Păun

  3. Leiden Center of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 1, 2333, Leiden, CA, The Netherlands

    Grzegorz Rozenberg

  4. Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS), Leminkäisenkatu 14, 20520, Turku, Finland

    Arto Salomaa

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bernardini, F., Gheorghe, M., Krasnogor, N., Muniyandi, R.C., Pérez-Jímenez, M.J., Romero-Campero, F.J. (2006). On P Systems as a Modelling Tool for Biological Systems. In: Freund, R., Păun, G., Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (eds) Membrane Computing. WMC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3850. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11603047_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11603047_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-30948-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32340-2

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