Numerical P systems with migrating variables

Numerical P systems are a class of P systems inspired both from the structure of living cells and from economics, where variables are associated with the membranes, and these associations are not changed during the computation. However, in the standard P systems, a crucial character for objects is that they can pass through membranes, between regions of the same cell, between cells, or between cells and their environment. We introduce this character also to numerical P systems, and call the new variant numerical P systems with migrating variables (MNP systems). The computational power of MNP systems is investigated both as number generators and as string generators, working in the one-parallel or the sequential modes. Specially, as number generators, MNP systems are proved to be universal working in the above two modes. As string generators, the generative capacity of such systems is investigated having as a reference the families of languages in the Chomsky hierarchy, and a characterization of recursively enumerable languages is obtained.