In the last years, it was observed an increasing interest of computer scientists in the structure of biological molecules and the way how they can be manipulated in vitro in order to define theoretical models of computation based on genetic engineering tools. Along the same lines, a parallel interest is growing regarding the process of evolution of living organisms. Much of the current data for genomes are expressed in the form of maps which are now becoming available and permit the study of the evolution of organisms at the scale of genome for the first time. On the other hand, there is an active trend nowadays throughout the field of computational biology toward abstracted, hierarchical views of biological sequences, which is very much in the spirit of computational linguistics. In the last decades, results and methods in the field of formal language theory that might be applied to the description of biological sequences were pointed out.

Membrane computing is an unconventional model of computation associated with a new computing paradigm. The field of membrane computing was initiated in 1998 by the author of this book; it is a branch of natural computing inspired by the structure and functioning of the living cell and devises distributed parallel computing models in the form of membrane systems. This book is the first monograph surveying the new field in a systematic and coherent way. It presents the central notions and results: the main classes of P systems, the main results about their computational power and efficiency, a complete bibliography, and a series of open problems and research topics.

The theory of formal languages is widely recognized as the backbone of theoretical computer science, originating from mathematics and generative linguistics, among others. As a foundational discipline, formal language theory concepts and techniques are present in a variety of theoretical and applied fields of contemporary research which are concerned with symbol manipulation: discrete mathematics, bioinformatics, natural language processing, pattern recognition, text retrieval, learning, cryptography, compression, etc. This volume presents the main results of some recent, quickly developing subfields of formal language theory in an easily accessible way and provides the reader with extensive bibliographical references to go deeper. Open problems are formulated too. The intended audience consists of undergraduates and graduates in computer science or mathematics. Graduates in other disciplines (linguistics, electrical engineering, molecular biology, logic) with some basic level of mathematical maturity may find the volume appealing and useful too. The book represents 'a gate to formal language theory and its applications' and a source of information in computation theory in general. This volume is complementary of the volumes in the Springer series Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, number 148, and Studies in Computational Intelligence, 25.

The contributors present the main results and techniques of their specialties in an easily accessible way accompanied with many references: historical, hints for complete proofs or solutions to exercises and directions for further research. This volume contains applications which have not appeared in any collection of this type. The book is a general source of information in computation theory, at the undergraduate and research level.

Formal Languages and Applications provides a comprehensive study-aid and self-tutorial for graduates students and researchers. The main results and techniques are presented in an readily accessible manner and accompanied by many references and directions for further research. This carefully edited monograph is intended to be the gateway to formal language theory and its applications, so it is very useful as a review and reference source of information in formal language theory.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems, ICARIS 2005, held in Banff, Alberta, Canada, in August 2005. The 37 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 68 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on conceptual, formal, and theoretical frameworks, immunoinformatics, theoretical and experimental studies on artificial immune systems, and applications of artificial immune systems.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on DNA Based Computers, DNA8, held in Sapporo, Japan, in June 2002. The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from an initial total of 68 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on self-assembly and autonomous molecular computation, molecular evolution and application to biotechnology, applications to mathematical problems, nucleic acid sequence design, and theory.

The completion of the first draft of the human genome has led to an explosion of interest in genetics and molecular biology. The view of the genome as a network of interacting computational components is well-established, but researchers are now trying to reverse the analogy, by using living organisms to construct logic circuits. The potential applications for such technologies is huge, ranging from bio-sensors, through industrial applications to drug delivery and diagnostics. This book would be the first to deal with the implementation of this technology, describing several working experimental demonstrations using cells as components of logic circuits, building toward computers incorporating biological components in their functioning.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory, DLT 2001, held in Vienna, Austria, in July 2001. The 24 revised full papers presented together with 10 revised invited papers were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and revision from a total of 64 papers submitted. Among the topics covered are grammars and acceptors, efficient algorithms for languages, combinatorial and algebraic properties, decision problems, relations to complexity theory, logic, picture description and analysis, DNA computing, cryptography, and concurrency.

"..., the 11th International Meeting on DNA Computing was held June 6–9, 2005 at the University ofWestern Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.