By defining the actions (states and transition functions) of these natural automata, the similarity between the computational data processing and plant decision-making processes became obvious.

Mealy Machines and Moore Machines: Two Different Types of Sequential Machines in vivoĪs the machine meets an input, it makes a jump to another state, according to the transition functions defined. 8 Standard biological parts, such as BioBricks, may provide the foundation for a new engineering discipline that enables the design and construction of synthetic biological systems with a variety of applications in bioenergy, new materials, therapeutics, and environmental remediation. In the last decade, the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) has been offering the chances for students and young researchers of various backgrounds to cope with each other to achieve designing and assembling of biological devices required for building the “genetic machines,” by using a library of standardized parts known as BioBricks. 7 To answer a question if simple biological systems can be built from standard, interchangeable parts and operated in living cells, synthetic biology is now expanding and affecting the educational sceneries. 6 Since the ability to quickly and reliably engineer many-component systems from libraries of standard interchangeable parts is one hallmark of modern technologies, nowadays, the synthetic biologists insist that we should adapt many of established frameworks for describing the existing engineered devices to the study and manipulation of biological objects. 5 argued that the construction of protocells, from a materials-point of view, is important in understanding the origin of life.Ī major goal of synthetic biology is to develop a deeper understanding of biological design principles from the bottom up, by building circuits and studying their behavior in the living cells. 3 Synthetic biologists engineer complex artificial biological systems to investigate the natural biological phenomena for a variety of applications. For understanding the life, it is simpler and far easier to create a minimal model that functions as a life or to develop much more simplified models mimicking at least a part of life, which is a fundamental idea common to newly emerging system biology and synthetic biology. Finally, their putative roles as the parts for plant-based computing or robotic systems are discussed.Īs natural computing studies attempt to understand the world including the biological systems arrond us, some approaches may be similar to the those taken by synthetic biologists. In the present review article, as the chemical and biological basis for natural computing or informatics, some plants, plant cells or plant-derived molecules behaving as natural sequential machines or automata are listed and classified as natural sequential machines (namely the Mealy machines or Moore machines) or FSA. In biology and artificial intelligence researches, finite-state machine are sometimes used to describe the neurological systems. A transition is a set of actions allowed starting from one state and ending in the same or another state, which is started by a triggering event or condition. A finite-state automaton (FSA), known as the finite-state machine is a behavioral model used to design the computer programs, which is composed of a finite number of states associated to transitions. 2 Using these abstract machines called automata (singular, automaton), the computational problems can be properly solved. The automata theory is the mathematical study of abstract machines commonly studied in the theoretical computer science. 1 It is a highly interdisciplinary field that combines the natural sciences and the theoretical computer science.

Natural computing is the recently growing field of research that investigates models and computational techniques inspired by nature and, dually, attempts to understand the world around us in terms of information processing.

Automaton definition