LANGUAGE FAMILIES DEFINED BY A CILIATE BIO-OPERATION: HIERARCHIES AND DECISION PROBLEMS

Abstract

We formalize the hairpin inverted repeat excision, which is known in ciliate genetics as an operation on words and languages by defining [Formula: see text] as the set of all words xαyRαRz where w = xαyαRz and the pointer α is in P. We extend this concept to language families which results in families [Formula: see text]. For [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] be the families of finite, regular, context-free, context-sensitive or recursively enumerable language, respectively, we determine the hierarchy of the families [Formula: see text] and compare these families with those of the Chomsky hierarchy. Furthermore, we present the status of decidability of the membership problem, emptiness problem and finiteness problem for the families [Formula: see text].