The Epigenetic Consensus Problem

A distributed computing system is a collection of processors that communicate either by reading and writing from shared memory or by sending messages over some communication network. Most prior biologically inspired distributed computing algorithms rely on message passing as the communication model. Here we show that in the process of genome-wide epigenetic modifications, cells utilize their DNA as a shared memory system. We formulate a particular consensus problem, called the epigenetic consensus problem, that cells attempt to solve using this shared memory model and then present algorithms, derive expected run time and discuss, analyze and simulate improved methods for solving this problem. Analysis of real biological data indicates that the computational methods indeed reflect aspects of the biological process for genome-wide epigenetic modifications.