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Dominoes and the regularity of DNA splicing languages

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Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 1989)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 372))

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Abstract

We introduce semigroups of dominoes as a tool for working with sets of linked strings. In particular, we are interested in splicing semigroups of dominoes. In the special case of alphabetic (symbol-to-symbol linked) dominoes the splicing semigroups are essentially equivalent to the splicing systems introduced by Head to study informational marcomolecules, specifically to study the effect of sets of restriction enzymes and ligase that allow DNA molecules to be cleaved and reassociated to produce further molecules. Our main result is that in the case of alphabetic dominoes the splicing semigroup generated from an initial regular set is again regular. This implies positive solution of two open problems stated by Head, namely the regularity of splicing systems and the decidability of their membership problem.

This research was supported by the National Sciences Foundation under Grant No. CCR-8702752.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, University of South Carolina, 29208, Columbia, SC, USA

    Karel Culik II

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Tero Harju

Authors
  1. Karel Culik II
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  2. Tero Harju
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Editor information

Giorgio Ausiello Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini Simonetta Ronchi Della Rocca

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© 1989 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Culik, K., Harju, T. (1989). Dominoes and the regularity of DNA splicing languages. In: Ausiello, G., Dezani-Ciancaglini, M., Della Rocca, S.R. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 372. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035763

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035763

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-51371-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46201-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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