Simulation of biological cells by systems composed of string-processing finite automata

In the last few years enormous progress has been made in clarifying the operational mechanisms of living cells. It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that all aspects of cell activity are controlled by sequences of elementary genetic units. A comma-free triplet coding in the four-letter alphabet of DNA is transcribed on RNA and causes the formation of sequences of amino acids, which make up polypeptides and proteins. Various theories of transcription control for such systems are now under study. Recently, synthetic nucleic acid (RNA) chains have been fed into the cell machinery, thus demonstrating that protein synthesis can be controlled artificially. Numerous finer details of the problem could be mentioned (see Crick, Nirenberg, Rich, Waddington, and Anfinsen) but shall not be considered in this report.

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