Molecular Computation and Evolutionary Wetware: A Cutting-Edge Technology for Artificial Life and Nanobiotechnologies

Focusing on the new frontiers opened by the integration of artificial life and nanobiotechnologies, this paper reviews mainstream biomolecular computation from the viewpoint of an information processing mechanism, computing methods, and problem-solving algorithms. We also discuss evolutionary wetware as a tool for unconventional computing, inspired by biomolecular systems in nature. Biomolecular computation uses a different paradigm of computing than that of the semiconductor computer. It includes several branches based on different molecular materials or molecular structures. Wetware can be used to demonstrate molecular evolution by engineered operations in test tubes. This makes evolutionary wetware capable of bridging the two domains of molecular computation and artificial life so that molecular information processing methods can be extended from carrying out computational tasks to modeling scalable complex systems. From a systematic study of nanobiomachines, we expect to designate models of artificial life, and to search for a novel methodology of nanobioICT (Information and Communication Technology) in the near future