Paton R C
Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, UK.
Biosystems. 1993;29(2-3):63-75. doi: 10.1016/0303-2647(93)90084-p.
A number of viewpoints on how a cell can be modelled are discussed in this paper in light of the ability it has to process information. The paper begins with a very brief summary of four general types of computation: sequential, parallel, distributed, and emergent. These form the general framework from which a number of comparisons are made. Several metaphors are introduced to enable reflections to be made about cellular computational properties. The most important metaphor, namely the cell as a machine, is discussed, and then a number of other ideas are introduced that complement much current thinking in this area. The idea of networks or circuits in the cell is then developed, as this provides a means of describing the mechanisms within a machine. Following on from this, three further metaphors are applied in order to overcome certain limitations in current machine thinking, cell-as-society, cell-as-text, and cell-as-field.
本文根据细胞处理信息的能力，讨论了关于如何对细胞进行建模的多种观点。本文开篇非常简要地总结了四种一般类型的计算：顺序计算、并行计算、分布式计算和涌现计算。这些构成了进行多种比较的总体框架。引入了几个隐喻，以便对细胞的计算特性进行思考。讨论了最重要的隐喻，即细胞作为一台机器，然后引入了一些其他观点，这些观点补充了该领域当前的许多思路。接着阐述了细胞中的网络或电路的概念，因为这提供了一种描述机器内部机制的方法。在此基础上，应用了另外三个隐喻，以克服当前机器思维中的某些局限性，即细胞作为社会、细胞作为文本和细胞作为场。
