Abstract
The ontogenetic development of living beings suggests the design of a new kind of multicellular automaton endowed with novel quasi-biological properties: self-repair and self-replication. In the framework of the Embryonics (embryonic electronics) project, we have developed such an automaton. Its macroscopic architecture is defined by three features: multicellular organization, cellular differentiation, and cellular division which are described in a companion paper [5]. In order to cope with the complexity of real problems, the cell is itself decomposed into an array of smaller elements, the molecules, themselves defined by three features: multimolecular organization, self-test and self-repair, and finally cellular self-replication, which is the basis of the macroscopic process of cellular division. These microscopic properties are illustrated by the example of an up-down counter. Finally, we propose a design methodology based on three successive configurations of the basic molecular tissue, a novel FPGA. These configurations are analogous to the operation of three kinds of genetic information: the polymerase, ribosomic, and operative genomes.
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Mange, D., Stauffer, A., Tempesti, G. (1998). Embryonics: A microscopic view of the molecular architecture. In: Sipper, M., Mange, D., PĂ©rez-Uribe, A. (eds) Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware. ICES 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1478. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0057620
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0057620
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