Software of Living Systems

Abstract

To understand the elaborate system of a living organism, it is essential to know its “software”, as well as its “hardware”. The software of a living organism may be defined as the package of algorithms (methods and procedures) for its survival. The hardware of a living organism is encoded by genes on the chromosome. Its behaviors should be explainable on the basis of algorithms. The algorithms of a living system can be viewed as biological information that has been envolved over its long history of evolution. Among living organisms are bacteria that are probably the simplest systems for analyzing the software of living organisms. In the present paper, we describe our method for constructing a virtual bacterial system as a tool for analyzing the software of a living organism. We also describe bacterial algorithms for surviving during phosphate starvation and exhibiting an intelligent behavior called chemotaxis. In addition, we demonstrate a mobile robot whose behavior is controlled by a computer program designed on the basis of the bacterial chemotaxis algorithm.