Silicon-Based Computers
Beyond Silicon Computing DNA Computers:
Ever since scientists discovered that conventional silicon-based computers have an upper limit in terms of speed, they have been searching for alternate media with which to solve computational problems. That search has led us, among other places, to DNA. The advantage of DNA is that it is tiny, cheap, and can react faster than silicon. Since this fledgling field is only eight years old, it is difficult to guess at this stage what applications it may ultimately have. For now it is a terrific example of basic research, bringing together researchers from two traditionally disparate fields-computer science and biology-to find new approaches to doing creative science.
Electronic computers are only the latest efforts to use the best technology available for performing computations. Electronic computers have their limitations: there is a limit to the amount of data they can store, and physical laws dictate the speed thresholds that will soon be reached. One of the most recent attempts to break down these barriers is to replace, once more, the tools for performing computations with biological ones instead of electrical ones: enter DNA.
DNA and RNA computing (also sometimes referred to as biomolecular computing or molecular computing) is a new computational paradigm that harnesses biological molecules to solve computational problems. Research in this area began with an experiment by Leonard Adleman, a computer scientist at USC.
The main idea is the encoding of data in DNA strands and the use of tools from molecular biology to execute computational operations. Besides the novelty of this approach, molecular computing has the potential to outperform electronic computers. For example, DNA computers may use a billion times less energy than electronic computers, while storing data in a trillion times less space. Moreover, computing with DNA is highly parallel: in principle there could be billions upon trillions
Ever since scientists discovered that conventional silicon-based computers have an upper limit in terms of speed, they have been searching for alternate media with which to solve computational problems. That search has led us, among other places, to DNA. The advantage of DNA is that it is tiny, cheap, and can react faster than silicon. Since this fledgling field is only eight years old, it is difficult to guess at this stage what applications it may ultimately have. For now it is a terrific example of basic research, bringing together researchers from two traditionally disparate fields-computer science and biology-to find new approaches to doing creative science.
Electronic computers are only the latest efforts to use the best technology available for performing computations. Electronic computers have their limitations: there is a limit to the amount of data they can store, and physical laws dictate the speed thresholds that will soon be reached. One of the most recent attempts to break down these barriers is to replace, once more, the tools for performing computations with biological ones instead of electrical ones: enter DNA.
DNA and RNA computing (also sometimes referred to as biomolecular computing or molecular computing) is a new computational paradigm that harnesses biological molecules to solve computational problems. Research in this area began with an experiment by Leonard Adleman, a computer scientist at USC.
The main idea is the encoding of data in DNA strands and the use of tools from molecular biology to execute computational operations. Besides the novelty of this approach, molecular computing has the potential to outperform electronic computers. For example, DNA computers may use a billion times less energy than electronic computers, while storing data in a trillion times less space. Moreover, computing with DNA is highly parallel: in principle there could be billions upon trillions