Bridging membrane and reaction systems -- further results and research topics (Q2865082)

The paper continues research aimed at bridging two areas concerned with processes inspired by the functioning of living cells, namely membrane computing and reaction systems. In contrast to membrane computing, reaction systems do not deal with multisets. It is assumed that if an entity is present, then enough copies of it are present to carry out all reactions with this entity. This is referred to as the threshold assumption. Further, an entity is present only if it is produced by a reaction in the step before or if it is brought into the system from the environment. This is referred to as the non-permanency assumption. The paper considers a transfer of these two assumptions for reaction systems into the framework of membrane computing. It is proved that spiking neural P systems with non-permanency spikes assumption characterize the semilinear sets of numbers and symport/antiport P systems with threshold assumption can solve the SAT problem in polynomial time. Finally, several further research topics are suggested.