Researchers at the University of Chicago have uncovered new insights into how cells process information and make decisions without a central nervous system. The study, led by postdoctoral fellow Carlos Floyd with Professors Aaron Dinner, Arvind Murugan, and Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan, examines how chemical networks inside cells act as a form of “biological hardware,” handling complex decision-making tasks that are vital for cellular function and survival.
The research explains that stem cells, for instance, interpret environmental signals to differentiate into specific cell types such as nerve or skin cells. “This decision needs to be performed without a brain—instead, cells rely on internal chemical reaction networks to compute the correct differentiation pathway,” Floyd said.
The team trained models of chemical reaction networks to perform classification tasks and found that these systems are subject to a “thermodynamic” constraint. This limitation, usually associated with energy efficiency in engines, was shown to also restrict biological systems’ computational capabilities based on their available energy.
Despite this constraint, the researchers identified that increasing “input multiplicity”—where one signal affects several network components—can help overcome these limits. According to Floyd, this indicates that naturally evolved circuits in living organisms may use interconnected elements for advanced decision-making with fewer parts. He added: “Our work aims to understand the computational power of these chemical reaction-based ‘computers’ and identify the features that enable them to perform more complex functions.”
The findings open up possibilities for creating artificial “smart” chemical processes capable of sensing and responding within biological environments. As Floyd stated: “Since we can now in principle train chemical reaction networks to perform complex classification tasks, we can imagine making ‘smart’ chemical processes.” Such technology could potentially be used in medical diagnostics and other applications.
The project received support from the Physics Frontier Center for Living Systems and utilized resources from the UChicago Research Computing Center. Funding came from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and University of Chicago.
Citation: Floyd, C., Dinner, A. R., Murugan, A., & Vaikuntanathan, S. Limits on the computational expressivity of non-equilibrium biophysical processes. Nature Communications, Aug. 5, 2025.