DNA FOR YOUR COMPUTER
Will your next computer be built from your genetic material? Though you shouldn’t start shopping for your DNA based PC yet, organic computers may soon become the dominant means of processing data.
Most of us think of computers as mechanical, and built from silicon chips. They process data in binary form: tiny electrical charges representing ones and zeroes. Many computer scientists, though, believe that we’ve gotten nearly as much out of silicon as we ever will. It gets ever more difficult to shrink circuits further, so we may not be able to improve computers much through conventional methods.
Enter the organic computer. Leonard Adleman first demonstrated a DNA computer in 1994. He used it to encode and solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a puzzle that had long bedeviled mathematicians: how to plot the most efficient route between 14 hypothetical cities.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) can store massive amounts of information. It encodes data in four different sequences of molecules. We will simply call the four types C, G, A, and T. They process information through bonding between DNA pairs. Their input is single strands; their output is transformed strands.
The programming of such computers is more chemical than electronic or mechanical.
Early organic computers were difficult to work with, and unsuited for most data processing tasks. Since then, biochemists have learned how to encourage different types of organic bonds. Organic computers now can carry much more information. More recently, some computer scientists have found efficient ways to coat DNA strands with gold. From these strands, they can build much smaller circuits than they can with silicon.
With this latest development, a practical all-purpose organic computer may be on the way. We could have organic computers by 2020.
In 1994, Leonard Adleman said, “Like quantum computing, organic computing is very futuristic. Both make the point that computation doesn’t have to take place in a box that sits on our desk.”
(To get the most from your computer, you need a good internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)