Actin quantum automata: Communication and computation in molecular networks

Publication date: Available online 2 February 2015 Source:Nano Communication Networks Author(s): Stefano Siccardi , A. Adamatzky Actin is filament-forming protein forming a communication and information processing cytoskeletal network of eukaryotic cells. Actin filaments play a key role in developing synaptic structure, memory and leaning of animals and humans; many psychiatric and neurological disorders are due to disfunction in the assembly of actin fibres. This is why it is important to develop abstractions of the information processing on the actin filaments. We model actin filaments as two chains of one-dimensional quantum automata arrays to describe hypothetical signalling events propagating along the chains. We study in details several functions of automaton state transitions and compute examples of evolution to illustrate behaviour of the functions and a role of the superposition of the initial states. We uncover and analyse localisations, or particles, propagating along the actin chains. We demonstrate that logical gates can be realised in the result of the collisions. Using collisions between the travelling particles we implement binary adder.
Source: Nano Communication Networks - Category: Nanotechnology Source Type: research