During the 20th century, biology has become a pilot science, so that many disciplines have formulated their theories under models taken from biology. Computer science has become almost a bio-inspired field thanks to the great development of natural computing and DNA computing. From linguistics, several attempts of establishing structural parallelism between DNA sequences and verbal language have been performed. In general, it can be stated that the processing of natural language can take great advantage of the structural and “semantic” similarities between those codes. Natural language processing could become another “bio-inspired” science, by means of theoretical computer science, that provides the theoretical tools and formalizations which are necessary for approaching such exchange of methodology. It is clear that interdisciplinarity must be an essential trait of the research on language.  Languages, either natural or artificial, are particular cases of symbol systems. And the manipulation of symbols is the stem of formal language theory. Linguistics, biology and computer science collaborate through the framework of formal language theory to give rise to the emergence of new scientific models that provide new ideas, tools and formalisms that can improve the description, analysis and processing of natural or artificial languages. 

This special session aims to bring together researchers from the areas of bio-inspired theoretical computer science,  bio-inspired theoretical linguistics and any related area that has as a goal the processing of languages (natural or artificial)  from a bio-molecular perspective. 

Topics include (but are not limited to): 

·         Theoretical DNA Computing

·         Cellular Models of Computing

·         Membrane Systems

·         NEPs-Networks of Evolutionary Processors

·         Natural Language Applications of Bio-Inspired Models of Computation

·         Tools for Processing DNA and Natural Language Strings

·         Analogies between the Genetic Code  and Natural Language