National Geographic.com - Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes


This sounds very cool.

Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA.


A year ago, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of silicon microchips. Now the team has gone one step further. In the new device, the single DNA molecule that provides the computer with the input data also provides all the necessary fuel.


The design is considered a giant step in DNA computing. The Guinness World Records last week recognized the computer as "the smallest biological computing device" ever constructed. DNA computing is in its infancy, and its implications are only beginning to be explored. But it could transform the future of computers, especially in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications. [...]


In terms of speed and size, however, DNA computers surpass conventional computers. While scientists say silicon chips cannot be scaled down much further, the DNA molecule found in the nucleus of all cells can hold more information in a cubic centimeter than a trillion music CDs. A spoonful of Shapiro's "computer soup" contains 15,000 trillion computers. And its energy-efficiency is more than a million times that of a PC.


While a desktop PC is designed to perform one calculation very fast, DNA strands produce billions of potential answers simultaneously. This makes the DNA computer suitable for solving "fuzzy logic" problems that have many possible solutions rather than the either/or logic of binary computers. In the future, some speculate, there may be hybrid machines that use traditional silicon for normal processing tasks but have DNA co-processors that can take over specific tasks they would be more suitable for. [...]