Chemlambda, universality and self-multiplication
This work aims to advance distributed computing and artificial life, though it appears incremental as part of a larger project without new empirical results.
The authors introduced chemlambda, an artificial chemistry that is Turing complete and models decentralized, distributed computing at the molecular level, using geometric structures for information encoding and local interactions.
We present chemlambda (or the chemical concrete machine), an artificial chemistry with the following properties: (a) is Turing complete, (b) has a model of decentralized, distributed computing associated to it, (c) works at the level of individual (artificial) molecules, subject of reversible, but otherwise deterministic interactions with a small number of enzymes, (d) encodes information in the geometrical structure of the molecules and not in their numbers, (e) all interactions are purely local in space and time. This is part of a larger project to create computing, artificial chemistry and artificial life in a distributed context, using topological and graphical languages.