Michael Ang

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DNA Computing Presentation

Thesis February 19th, 2007

DNA Computing Presentation

I gave a presentation this week on DNA computing to the ITP Artificial Intelligence and Biologically Inspired Computing discussion group.

DNA computing is fascinating to me since it offers the potential of massive parallelization (trillions of copies in a drop of water), use of DNA as input and output, and tiny power consumption. The basic idea is that you can encode “software” into physical strands of DNA and use chemical and enzymatic reactions to do computation. The most exciting example I’ve come across so far is a DNA computer developed by the Weizmann Institute that can recognize abnormal activity related to cancer that can be detected when four separate genes are active. The computer recognizes that all four are active together and then releases a strand of DNA that could suppress the activity. This has been shown to work in a test tube and there are huge hurdles to overcome before it could work inside the human body. Very interesting to think of molecular computers eventually working inside cells and programs modulating activity inside those cells.

Here are the slides from my presentation (.ppt). References from the presentation below. This biological nanocomputer animation from the Weizmann Institute is great.

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