Distributed Reaction Systems Viewed as Multi-Agent Systems

A reaction system is defined by three sets formed by the abstractions of the chemicals existing in a cell involved in a reaction, namely the set of reactants, which facilitate the reaction, the set of inhibitors, which are substances that block the reaction, and the set of products resulting during the reaction. We define a distributed reaction system, which is formed by several reaction systems and an environment, and advocate a strong connection with multi-agent systems, especially with the blackboard model. We briefly discuss how these systems might be used for simulating the function of thalamus in animals. Finally, we propose two possible ways of using distributed reaction systems for computing sets of numbers and sets of strings.