Oritatami System;a Survey and the Impossibility of Simple Simulation at Small Delays

Abstract

RNA sequences start folding immediately as they are synthesized by RNA polymerase (cotranscriptional folding). The oritatami system (OS) is a novel mathematical model to study computational aspects of cotranscriptional folding. In this paper, we first provide a survey throughout existing research topics and results on oritatami systems and offer research directions of significance. Simulation of an oritatami system in a different ratio (delay) of transcription speed to the speed of folding is one of them. We will introduce a simple notion of simulation, and prove that there is an OS of delay δ that cannot be simulated by any oritatami system at larger delay.