Guest editors' introduction: Biocomputation

The juxtaposition of computation and biology opens up a new world of science and technology. Richard Feynman characterizes the young and fast-developing world of computer science as follows: "[it] is like engineering-it is all about getting something to do something."1 Viewed from this perspective, the scope of research and development at this intersection is a vast, two-way street that computer science has to offer to biological science and biotechnology and vice versa. Computational thinking helps characterize, predict, and influence the dynamics of biological processes from molecular to cellular to organ in a way that revolutionizes our understanding of health and drug design. In turn, understanding the architecture and principles of natural biological processes and organization might require new models of computation, which could lead to robustness in the design of large-scale software and hardware systems, a hitherto elusive goal.