Test tube systems with controlled applications of rules

Test tube systems were introduced as biological computer systems based on DNA molecules. We introduce various general models for test tube systems (Adleman, 1994) where the number of applications of rules in a test tube to a specific object is restricted and the redistribution of the contents of the tubes is prescribed. Using the splicing operation introduced in (Csuhaj-Varju et al., 1996) or the operations of cutting and recombination introduced in (Freund, 1996) in the test tubes such systems turn out to have universal computational power