scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

On the ambiguity of insertion systems

01 Nov 2011-International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science (World Scientific Publishing Company)-Vol. 22, Iss: 07, pp 1747-1758

TL;DR: This paper defines six levels of ambiguity for insertion systems based on the components used in the derivation such as axiom, contexts and strings and shows that there are inherently i-ambiguous insertion languages which are j-unambiguous for the combinations (i, j).

AbstractGene insertion and deletion are the operations that occur commonly in DNA processing and RNA editing. Based on these evolutionary transformations, a computing model has been formulated in formal language theory known as insertion-deletion systems. In this paper, we study about the ambiguity issues of insertion systems. First, we define six levels of ambiguity for insertion systems based on the components used in the derivation such as axiom, contexts and strings. Next, we show that there are inherently i-ambiguous insertion languages which are j-unambiguous for the combinations (i, j) ∈ {(5,0), (5,4), (4,3), (4,2), (3,1),(2,1), (1,0), (0,1)}. Finally, we prove an important result that the ambiguity problem of insertion systems is undecidable.

...read more


References
More filters
Book
15 Sep 1998
TL;DR: This book starts with an introduction to DNA computing, exploring the power of complementarity, the basics of biochemistry, and language and computation theory, and brings the reader to the most advanced theories develop thus far in this emerging research area.
Abstract: This is the first book on DNA computing, a molecular approach that may revolutionize computing-replacing silicon with carbon and microchips with DNA molecules. The book starts with an introduction to DNA computing, exploring the power of complementarity, the basics of biochemistry, and language and computation theory. It then brings the reader to the most advanced theories develop thus far in this emerging research area.

747 citations


"On the ambiguity of insertion syste..." refers background in this paper

  • ...The area includes DNA computing [6],membrane computing [9] and evolutionary computing [1] among other topics....

    [...]

  • ...The developments have taken place in DNA computing inspired the definition and study of new theoretical models in formal language theory, such as sticker systems, splicing systems, Watson-Crick automata and insertion-deletion systems [3, 6]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is proved that every Turing machine can be simulated by a system based entirely on contextual insertions and deletions and decidability of existence of solutions to equations involving these operations.
Abstract: We investigate two generalizations of insertion and deletion of words, that have recently become of interest in the context of molecular computing. Given a pair of words (x, y), called a context, the (x, y)-contextual insertion of a wordvinto a worduis performed as follows. For each occurrence ofxyas a subword inu, we include in the result of the contextual insertion the words obtained by insertingvintou, betweenxandy. The (x, y)-contextual deletion operation is defined in a similar way. We study closure properties of the Chomsky families under the defined operations, contextual ins-closed and del-closed languages, and decidability of existence of solutions to equations involving these operations. Moreover, we prove that every Turing machine can be simulated by a system based entirely on contextual insertions and deletions

131 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
15 Oct 1983

53 citations