From chemical soup to computing circuit: transforming a contiguous chemical medium into a logic gate network by modulating its external conditions

J R Soc Interface. 2019 Sep 27;16(158):20190190. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2019.0190. Epub 2019 Sep 11.

Abstract

It has been shown that it is possible to transform a well-stirred chemical medium into a logic gate simply by varying the chemistry's external conditions (feed rates, lighting conditions, etc.). We extend this work, showing that the same method can be generalized to spatially extended systems. We vary the external conditions of a well-known chemical medium (a cubic autocatalytic reaction-diffusion model), so that different regions of the simulated chemistry are operating under particular conditions at particular times. In so doing, we are able to transform the initially uniform chemistry, not just into a single logic gate, but into a functionally integrated network of diverse logic gates that operate as a basic computational circuit known as a full-adder.

Keywords: chemical logic gate; dynamical system control; natural computing.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computers, Molecular*
  • Models, Chemical*