Bio-inspired computing is a new field of science in which computer scientists and biologists collaborate to create applications that mimic nature. A team of scientists from the University of Extremadura has shown thatintelligent behavior of bees in hives may inspire the development of a computer programat the service of other research, especially in the field of DNA sequencing.
In hives there are several types of bees, each with a different function. The workers collect the pollen and communicate to the observers where the flowers are, at what distance, and the amount of pollen they have. The observers interpret this information in order to follow those bees that are in the flowers that interest them the most. And lastly, the scout bees venture elsewhere to search for new flowers.
If we translate this procedure to the computer world, flowers would be the solution to a problem, and pollen the quality of said solution. The bees would be a mathematical algorithm that looks for nearby solutions – flowers – and, from among them, selects the most efficient ones, which in the case of bees were equivalent to the flowers that had the greatest amount of pollen. In addition, in a complementary way, the behavior of the explorers is reproduced, since new solutions are also searched at random in case good options are found that can be incorporated into the process.
As explained by Miguel Ángel Vega, author of the study published in the IEEC journal, “the process repeated many times provides reasoned solutions that can be applied to certain fields of research related to genetics and the evolution of species”.
The new computer program would allow, for example, the search for repeated DNA sequences in the genome with the aim of discovering new genes or knowing their function. The software will also have applications in obtaining new fruit variants, in paleontology or in studies of the genetic evolution of species.
