On Special forms of Splicing on Arrays and Graphs

Abstract

Tom Head (1987), in his pioneering work on formal language theory applied to DNA computing, introduced a new operation of splicing on strings, while proposing a model of certain recombination behaviour of DNA molecules under the action of restriction enzymes and ligases. Since then this operation has been studied in great depth giving rise to a number of theoretical results of great interest in formal language theory. Extension of this operation of splicing to higher dimensional structures such as circular words, arrays, trees and graphs have been proposed in the literature. Here we examine the effect of certain specific forms of the splicing operation applied to arrays and graphs.