This book is concerned with computing in materio: that is, unconventional computing performed by directly harnessing the physical properties of materials. It offers an overview of the field, covering four main areas of interest: theory, practice, applications and implications. Each chapter synthesizes current understanding by deliberately bringing together researchers across a collection of related research projects. The book is useful for graduate students, researchers in the field, and the general scientific reader who is interested in inherently interdisciplinary research at the intersections of computer science, biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and mathematics.

This book is concerned with computing in materio: that is, unconventional computing performed by directly harnessing the physical properties of materials. It offers an overview of the field, covering four main areas of interest: theory, practice, applications and implications. Each chapter synthesizes current understanding by deliberately bringing together researchers across a collection of related research projects. The book is useful for graduate students, researchers in the field, and the general scientific reader who is interested in inherently interdisciplinary research at the intersections of computer science, biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and mathematics.

This book provides a broad overview of the entire field of DNA computation, tracing its history and development. It contains detailed descriptions of all major theoretical models and experimental results to date and discusses potential future developments. It concludes by outlining the challenges currently faced by researchers in the field. This book will be a useful reference for researchers and students, as well as an accessible introduction for those new to the field.

The field of DNA computation has flourished since the publication of Adleman's seminal article, in which he demonstrated for the first time how a computation may be performed at a molecular level by performing standard operations on a tube of DNA strands. Since Adleman's original experiment, interest in DNA computing has increased dramatically. This book provides a broad overview of the entire field of DNA computation, tracing its history and development. It contains detailed descripions of all major theoretical models and experimental results to date, which are lacking in existing texts. Potential future developments are also discussed. The book is a useful reference source for researchers and students, as well as an accessible introduction for people new to the field.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation, UCNC 2016, held in Manchester, UK, in July 2016. The 15 revised full papers presented together with 5 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics including molecular, cellular, quantum, optical and chaos computing; cellular automata; neural and evolutionary computation; artificial immune systems; Ant algorithms and swarm intelligence; amorphous computing; membrane computing; computational systems biology and computational neuroscience; and synthetic biology.

The completion of the first draft of the human genome has led to an explosion of interest in genetics and molecular biology. The view of the genome as a network of interacting computational components is well-established, but researchers are now trying to reverse the analogy, by using living organisms to construct logic circuits. The potential applications for such technologies is huge, ranging from bio-sensors, through industrial applications to drug delivery and diagnostics. This book would be the first to deal with the implementation of this technology, describing several working experimental demonstrations using cells as components of logic circuits, building toward computers incorporating biological components in their functioning.

The completion of the first draft of the human genome has led to an explosion of interest in genetics and molecular biology. The view of the genome as a network of interacting computational components is well-established, but researchers are now trying to reverse the analogy, by using living organisms to construct logic circuits. The potential applications for such technologies is huge, ranging from bio-sensors, through industrial applications to drug delivery and diagnostics. This book would be the first to deal with the implementation of this technology, describing several working experimental demonstrations using cells as components of logic circuits, building toward computers incorporating biological components in their functioning.