Multi-head Watson-Crick automata

TL;DR

This paper introduces multi-head Watson-Crick automata, a novel computational model inspired by DNA structures, demonstrating their enhanced power over traditional multi-head finite automata and their equivalence to parallel communicating Watson-Crick systems.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new automaton model replacing the tape with a DNA double strand, showing its computational advantages and equivalence to existing Watson-Crick automata systems.

Findings

Can accept non-regular unary languages

Superiority over multi-head finite automata

Equivalent computational power to parallel communicating Watson-Crick automata systems

Abstract

Inspired by multi-head finite automata and Watson-Crick automata in this paper, we introduce new structure namely multi-head Watson-Crick automata where we replace the single tape of multi-head finite automaton by a DNA double strand. The content of the second tape is determined using a complementarity relation similar to Watson-Crick complementarity relation. We establish the superiority of our model over multi-head finite automata and also show that both the deterministic and non-deterministic variant of the model can accept non-regular unary languages. We also compare our model with parallel communicating Watson-Crick automata systems and prove that both of them have the same computational power.