[To Tominaga Lab Top Page][Japanese]
Artificial life is one of the hottest research fields
which is related to studies on so-called complex systems.
As its name suggests, artificial life is a study on life which is realized using computers.
In this study area, people are trying to understand the origin of life, the various systems in
living organisms, or the mechanisms of evolution by means of making models for them
and implementing experimental systems as software.
Some people even attempt to create software
that can itself be regarded as “life.”
[Wikipedia entry for artificial life]
Since artificial life is quite a new research area (it started to become popular in 1980s),
and it is also a vast field,
there are a lot of studies to do, and various systems and models have been proposed.
Among them, the models called artificial chemistries are emerging,
and starting to be widely used to express various behavior found in the natural world.
Basically, artificial chemistries are abstract models of chemical reactions.
(And some artificial chemistries model physical reactions, so the name is a bit confusing.)
[Wikipedia entry for artificial chemistry]
For example, a molecule of water (H2O) is composed of two hydrogen atoms (H)
and one oxygen atom (O), and this can be described by the following expression.
H2 + O -> H2O
Well, oxygen exists as a molecule O2 in the air.
But the point is, this expression describes a sort of abstract interaction among the atoms,
and artificial chemistries model the behavior of molecules in such manners.
In a software simulator, mixing a lot of virtual molecules in a virtual tank,
and letting them react to see what will happen.
Since chemical and physical reactions play key roles in living organisms,
artificial chemistries are regarded as good tools in the study of artificial life.
[Screen snapshot of our simulator] (312 kbytes, 1024 x 768 pixels)
In our lab, we are mainly trying to model various behavior found in living organisms
using a simple artificial chemistry.
Furthermore, we are exploring relationship between artificial chemistries and DNA computation.
Although we have just started this research, we think this research is quite promising,
and above all, it is really interesting.
Recent achievement: an artificial chemistry can be used to compose music.
Do you want to listen to some sample tunes?
- Kazuto Tominaga: Artificial Chemistry and Natural Computing.
International Journal of Unconventional Computing. In press.
- Kazuto Tominaga, Yoshikazu Suzuki, Keiji Kobayashi, Tooru Watanabe, Kazumasa Koizumi and Koji Kishi:
Modelling Biochemical Pathways Using an Artificial Chemistry.
Artificial Life. In press.
- Kazuto Tominaga and Masafumi Setomoto:
An Artificial-Chemistry Approach to Generating Polyphonic Musical Phrases.
In Applications of Evolutionary Computing (Proc. EvoWorkshops 2008), pp463-472, 2008.
- Kazuto Tominaga, Tooru Watanabe, Keiji Kobayashi, Masaki Nakamura, Koji Kishi and Mitsuyoshi Kazuno:
Modeling Molecular Computing Systems by an Artificial Chemistry - Its Expressive Power and Application.
Artificial Life, 13:3, pp223-247, 2007.
- Kazuto Tominaga, Tooru Watanabe and Maki Suzuki:
Formulating Membrane Dynamics with the Reaction of Surface Objects.
In Advances in Artificial Life (Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2007)),
pp12-21, 2007.
- Tooru Watanabe, Kazumasa Koizumi, Koji Kishi, Masaki Nakamura, Keiji Kobayashi,
Mitsuyoshi Kazuno, Yoshikazu Suzuki, Yuuki Asada and Kazuto Tominaga:
A Uniform Framework of Molecular Interaction for an Artificial Chemistry with Compartments.
Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, pp54-60, 2007.
- Tomoya Miura and Kazuto Tominaga:
An approach to algorithmic music composition with an artificial chemistry.
In Explorations in the Complexity of Possible Life
(Proceedings of the 7th German Workshop on Artificial Life (GWAL-7)), 2006.
- Kazuto Tominaga: An approach to reasoning in an artificial chemistry.
In Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Parallel
and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'06), 2006.
- Kazuto Tominaga, Keiji Kobayashi, Tooru Watanabe, Kazumasa Koizumi and Koji Kishi:
An approach to constructing qualitative models in computational cell biology
using an artificial chemistry based on pattern matching and recombination.
In Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on the Simulation
and Synthesis of Living Systems (ALIFE X), 2006.
- Yoshikazu Suzuki and Kazuto Tominaga:
Describing metabolic pathways using an artificial chemistry
based on pattern matching and recombination.
In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB '06), 2006.
[PDF]
- Yuuki Asada and Tooru Watanabe and Kazuto Tominaga:
Extending an Artificial Chemistry Based on Collision Theory.
Technical Report 2006-MPS-62, 135,
Information Processing Society of Japan,
pp181-184, 2006. (In Japanese)
- Tooru Watanabe, Keiji Kobayashi, Masaki Nakamura,
Koji Kishi, Mitsuyoshi Kazuno and Kazuto Tominaga:
Describing DNA automata using an artificial chemistry
based on pattern matching and recombination.
In Recent Advances in Artificial Life
(Proceedings of the Second Australian Conference on Artificial Life), 2005.
- Kazuto Tominaga:
Describing protein synthesis and a cell cycle of an imaginary cell
using a simple artificial chemistry.
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Artificial Chemistry and Its Applications,
a part of the 8th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2005),
September 2005.
[PDF]
- Kazuto Tominaga:
Modelling DNA computation by an artificial chemistry
based on pattern matching and recombination.
In proceedings of the Workshop on Artificial Chemistry and Its Applications,
a part of the 9th International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems
(ALIFE9), September 2004.
[PDF]
- Kazuto Tominaga:
Implementation of a prototypal simulator for a formal model
based on pattern matching and recombination.
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Self-organization in Representations,
a part of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2004,
June 2004.
[PDF]
- Kazuto Tominaga:
A formal model based on affinity among elements for describing behavior of complex systems.
Technical Report UIUCDCS-R-2004-2413, Department of Computer Science,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, March 2004 (Corrected: June 2004).
[PDF]
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(Last updated: $Date: 2007/08/01 02:31:26 $)
