DNA Computers

Outline What is DNA Computing << DNAC >> ? History of DNA Computing. Adleman's DNA Computer. Advantages and disadvantages. The Future of DNA Computing. Conclusion.

DNA Computing also known as molecular computing DNA computing is a form of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology, instead of traditional silicon-based computer technologies. Its one of the Fast growing fields in both CS and Biology. the use of DNA molecules in computers 

History "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons" in 1994, Leonard Adleman used the DNA as a form of computation to solve the Seven-Point Hamiltonian Path Problem in 2002, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, unveiled a programmable molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules on April 28, 2004, they announced in the journal Nature that they had constucted a DNA computer.this was coupled with an input and output module and is capable of diagnosing cancerous activity within a cell, and then releasing an anti cancer drug upon diagnosis

Adleman's DNA Computer: the Seven-Point Hamiltonian Path Problem the objective is to find a path from Start to end going through all the points only once.

Advantages Tremendous memory storage. Inexpensive to build. the genetic information carried in a human cell would fill a book of more than 500,000 pages. Inexpensive to build. Less energy consumption. Incomparable computational power Massively Parallel Nature: while DNA can only carry out computations slowly, DNA computers can perform a staggering number of calculations simultaneously in order of 109 calculations per second.

Disadvantages Although Adleman's first application took only milliseconds to produce a solution, it took about a week to fish the solution molecules out from the rest of possible path molecules that had formed. DNA splicing and selection equipment needs to be refined for this purpose. There is also no guarantee that the solution produced will be the absolute best solution. It couldn't replace traditional computers. Not programmable, however, research is ongoing in doing boolean logic with DNA and designing universal programmable DNA Computers.

The Future of DNA Computing. University of Southern California, with Dr. Adleman and Princeton University with Dr. Richard Lipton and some graduated students, are developing new branches in this field like Cryptography. They works on decreasing error and damage to the DNA during computations. In his article "Speeding Up Computation via Molecular Biology" Lipton shows how DNA can be used to construct a Turning machine, a universal computer capable of performing any calculation, but its all only in theory.

Conclusion  The Field of DNA Computing is truly exciting for the revolution implies will occur within the next few years. A computer scientist can mess around with biology equipment and come up with something new and valuable.

References:  [1] DIMACS Proceedings: DNA Based Computers I (#27), II (#44), III (#48), IV (Special Issue of Biosystems), V(MIT, June 1999)  [2] Other: Genetic Programming 1 (Stanford, 1997), Genetic Programming 2 (Wisconsin-Madison, 1998), IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation (Indianapolis, 1997)  [3] Richard P. Feynman, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. In D. Gilbert, ed., Miniaturization, 282-296. Reinhold (1961)  [4] Leonard Adleman, Molecular computation of solutions to combinatorial problems. Science 266, 1021-1024 (1994)  [5] Dr. Karron's Bioinformatics web class 2006.

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