Circular contextual insertions/deletions with applications to biomolecular computation

Abstract

Insertions and deletions of small circular DNA strands into long linear DNA strands are phenomena that happen frequently in nature and thus constitute an attractive paradigm for biomolecular computing. The paper presents a new model for DNA-based computation that involves circular as well as linear molecules, and that uses the operations of insertion and deletion. After introducing the formal model, we investigate its properties and prove in particular that the circular insertion/deletion systems are capable of universal computation. We also give the results of an experimental laboratory implementation of our model. This shows that rewriting systems of the circular insertion/deletion type are viable alternatives in DNA computation.