Instantaneous arithmetic computation via ratio-encoding in chemical reaction networks

Abstract

We develop a general framework for instantaneous arithmetic computation using chemical reaction networks. Numerical values are encoded by ratios of species concentrations: an extended nonnegative value $a\in[0,+\infty]$ is represented by a computational pair $(A_0,A_1)$ through the ratio $a=a_1/a_0$. For this ratio encoding, our main theoretical result is a feedforward compositionality theorem: if a collection of modules satisfies two easily checked structural conditions, then any admissible finite feedforward composition computes the corresponding arithmetic expression instantaneously, meaning that every intermediate and output ratio is correct at every positive time. We make this framework concrete by constructing reaction network modules for four elementary operations---identification, inversion, multiplication, and addition---and verifying that each satisfies these structural conditions. As applications, we show that truncated power series and matrix products can be computed instantaneously using reaction networks whose size reflects the number of arithmetic operations in the underlying computation. We also extend the nonnegative ratio encoding to signed quantities by representing a real number as the difference of two nonnegative ratio-encoded values; this allows addition and multiplication over real-valued inputs. We discuss the practical implications of instantaneous computation, including its relationship to other resource constraints such as the number of chemical species required and the cost of reading out the final answer, which requires division and, in the signed case, rectified subtraction.