Abstract
Collision-based computing (CBC) is a form of unconventional computing in which travelling localisations represent data and conditional routing of signals determines the output state; collisions between localisations represent logical operations. We investigated patterns of Ca2+-containing vesicle distribution within a live organism, slime mould Physarum polycephalum, with confocal microscopy and observed them colliding regularly. Vesicles travel down cytoskeletal ‘circuitry’ and their collisions may result in reflection, fusion or annihilation. We demonstrate through experimental observations that naturally-occurring vesicle dynamics may be characterised as a computationally-universal set of Boolean logical operations and present a ‘vesicle modification’ of the archetypal CBC ‘billiard ball model’ of computation. We proceed to discuss the viability of intracellular vesicles as an unconventional computing substrate in which we delineate practical considerations for reliable vesicle ‘programming’ in both in vivo and in vitro vesicle computing architectures and present optimised designs for both single logical gates and combinatorial logic circuits based on cytoskeletal network conformations. The results presented here demonstrate the first characterisation of intracelluar phenomena as collision-based computing and hence the viability of biological substrates for computing.
Highlights
Collision-based computing (CBC) is a form of unconventional computing in which travelling localisations represent data—the presence of which in a specific location represents a logical ‘1’ (TRUE) and vice versa—which are conditionally routed to represent an output state
CBC is best demonstrated with Fredkin and Toffoli’s CBC billiard-ball model (BBM) [1], in which hypothetical billiard balls of equal mass and dimensions that travel along the grid lines of a Cartesian lattice at uniform speed may collide with each other, altering their final trajectories and the output of the billiard ball machine
The motivation for research into unconventional/biological computing includes, briefly, our attempts to curtail the rapid approach to the physical limitations of the materials in siliconbased architectures, the apparent computing power to energy consumption ratio of biological substrates, the polluting nature of conventional computer manufacture and the emergent properties of biological substrates, such as self-assembly/organisation, massive parallelism and the huge potential information density of macromolecules, the retrieval of which poses significantly fewer issues concerning heat dissipation
Summary
Collision-based computing (CBC) is a form of unconventional computing in which travelling localisations represent data—the presence of which in a specific location represents a logical ‘1’ (TRUE) and vice versa—which are conditionally routed to represent an output state. It can be said that computation has been achieved as signal routing is altered. CBC is best demonstrated with Fredkin and Toffoli’s CBC billiard-ball model (BBM) [1], in which hypothetical billiard balls of equal mass and dimensions that travel along the grid lines of a Cartesian lattice at uniform speed may collide with each other, altering their final trajectories and the output of the billiard ball machine. Designed to exploit the laws of physics in order to maximise computational efficiency, the BBM is a reversible (time-invertible), conservative computing paradigm.
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