This paper introduces and investigates a generative mechanism based on
some operations inspired by the large-scale mutations in genomes (del
etion, inversion, transposition, duplication). Basic questions regardi
ng these devices and their generated languages are investigated: gener
ative capacity, closure properties, decidability. We also briefly disc
uss a few problems concerning our model with respect to some structura
l features of the nucleic acids. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd
.