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Toward a Self-replicating Metabolic P System

This work concerns the synthesis of a ‘minimal cell’ by means of a P system, which is a distributed rewriting system inspired by the structure and the functioning of the biological cell. Specifically, we aim to define a dynamical system which exhibits a steady metabolic evolution, resulting in self-maintenance and self-reproduction. Metabolic P systems represent a class of P systems particularly promising to model a minimal cell in discrete terms, since they have already successfully modeled several metabolisms. The main further step is thus to find a simple way to obtain Metabolic P system self-replication. This paper deals with ideas presented at the BWMC11 (held in Seville, Feb 2011) and opens a new trend in membrane computing, based on computational synthetic biology oriented applications of P systems modeling. The framework is here outlined, and some problems to tackle the synthesis of a minimal cell are discussed. Moreover, an overview of literature and a list of appealing research directions is given, along with several references.