(Attempts to Get) Back to Reality

Abstract

In the Introduction, we stressed the fact that membrane computing is inspired by the biology of the cell, but it is a theoretical computer science enterprise, aiming to provide new computing paradigms abstracted from the cell structure and functioning, but not (yet) trying to model the cell in such a way as to return relevant conclusions to the biologist. Anyway, this was the style of the developments in this area up to now and this was the style of this book. On the other hand, the mathematical developments in membrane computing already seem to make possible attempts to capture more real-life features of living cells, so that, to try to build a model of the cell, starting from the computing models inspired by the cell. The usefulness of such a model can be proved by (making possible) computer simulations of various aspects of a cell.