Abstract
Molecular biology investigates the structure and function of biochemical systems starting from their basic building blocks: macromolecules. A macromolecule is a large, complex molecule (a protein or a nucleic acid) that usually has inner mutable state and external activity. Informal explanations of biochemical events trace individual macromolecules through their state changes and their interaction histories: a macromolecule is endowed with an identity that is retained through its transformations, even through changes in molecular energy and mass. A macromolecule, therefore, is qualitatively different from the small molecules of inorganic chemistry. Such molecules are stateless: in the standard notation for chemical reactions they are seemingly created and destroyed, and their atomic structure is used mainly for the bookkeeping required by the conservation of mass.
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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Cardelli, L. (2009). Molecules as Automata. In: Corradini, A., Montanari, U. (eds) Recent Trends in Algebraic Development Techniques. WADT 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5486. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03429-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03429-9_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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