You would be very interested in the work of independent research biologist Brian J Ford (http://www.brianjford.com/bjford.htm). Over the years he has championed the idea of the intelligent cell, and the importance of studying the entire system of the living cell.
Thats great, I'll check that out. I took a few graduate courses in systems biology and related machine learning a long time ago, but I lost interest because it was so `human` biology focused, and that area of biology very-much does not appeal to me. There are some datasets prepared in such away as to address some of the issues in cellular intelligence, but very few out side of the realm of human biology.
I think the most interesting components to me are histology and transtrictomics as they relate to cellular behavior. The fact that cells have to rely on membranes and voltage potentials, but through compartmentalization are able to create a dynamic computational environment, is the really mind-blowing bit.
Its always funny to me when people want to reduce the behavior of non-human lifeforms to something akin to a program written on a tape drive (see below), when we know that DNA exists in a dynamical 3-dimensional form when in the somatic phase.
Check out his latest publications here: http://brianjford.com/wbbjf10.htm