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06071907 Santini, Cristina Costa Bio-inspired information processing applied to engineering systems. Lones, Michael A. (ed.) et al., Information processign in cells and tissues. 9th international conference, IPCAT 2012, Cambridge, UK, March 31--April 2, 2012. Proceedings. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-642-28791-6/pbk). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7223, 188-199 (2012). 2012 Berlin: Springer EN information processing bio-inspired engineering systems

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-28792-3_24

Summary: Over the course of billions of years, under evolutionary pressure, Nature has evolved solutions to various problems. As our ability to understand the biological mechanisms that are intrinsic in these solutions continues to improve, we have the opportunity to apply this knowledge when solving our challenging problems, in fields such as medicine and the environment. This paper discusses an approach, in which biological systems are investigated as information processing systems, and the understanding of how these systems process information is then applied to engineering systems. Two examples are presented. The first one discusses how the heart's fault-tolerant information processing can be implemented in an electronic system. The second example discusses a cellular biochemical reaction network and how its property of robustness can be implemented in a chemical system. Finally, three different applications, in which this approach is already being applied with promising results, are briefly reviewed.