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I believe things like DNA computing will eventually lead
the way to a molecular revolution, which ultimately will
have a very dramatic effect on the world.
L. Adleman
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What is DNA Computer??y A nanocomputerthat uses DNA (deoxyribonucleic acids) to store
information and perform complex calculations.
y This field seeks to use biological molecules such as DNA and
RNA to solve basic mathematical problems.
y The DNA sequences were set to replicate and create trillions of
new sequences based on the initial input sequences in a matter of
seconds (called DNA hybridization).
y The theory holds that the solution to the problem was one of the
new sequence strands. By process of elimination, the correct
solution would be obtained. 2
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History of DNA Computer
y In 1994, University of Southern California computer scientist
Leonard Adelman suggested that DNA could be used to solve
complex mathematical problems.
y Adelman found a way to harness the power of DNA to solve
the Hamiltonian path problem (the traveling salesman
problem), whose solution required finding a path from start to
end going through all the points (cities) only once.
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Uniqueness of DNA
Why is DNA a Unique Computational Element???
y Extremely dense information storage.
y Enormous parallelism.
y Extraordinary energy efficiency.
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Dense Information Storage
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This image shows 1 gram of
DNA on a CD. The CD can hold
800 MB of data.
The 1 gram of DNA can hold
about 1x1014 MB of data.
The number of CDs required to
hold this amount of information,
lined up edge to edge, wouldcircle the Earth 375 times, and
would take 163,000 centuries to
listen to.
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How Dense is the Information Storage??
y with bases spaced at 0.35 nm along DNA, data
density is over a million Gbits/inch compared to 7
Gbits/inch in typical high performance HDD.
y Check this out..
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How enormous is the parallelism?
y A test tube of DNA can contain trillions of strands.
Each operation on a test tube of DNA is carried out
on all strands in the tube in parallel !
y Check this out.We Typically use
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How extraordinary is the energy efficiency?
y Adleman figured his computer was running
2 x 1019
operations per joule.
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Silicon chips Vs DNA Computers
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HOW DNA Computer WORKS??
y The working of DNA Computers can be explained by aHamiltonian path problem, a very complex problem
because with each variable added the computational
complexity increases several times.
y From the above experiment one can deduce that DNA can be
used to solve complex mathematical problems.
y In the experiment the problem was coded into the DNA
structure and hence it can be treated as software.y The enzymes and chemicals which operated on this DNA
structure during reaction to modify it for obtaining possible
answers can be viewed as hardware.
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Advantages of DNA Computers
y Cheap, clean, readily available materials.
y Amazing ability to store information.
yThe DNA chip manufacture does not produce toxic by-products.
y DNA computers will be much smaller in size than silicon-based
computers.
y Perform millions of operations simultaneously.
yGenerate a complete set of potential solutions.
y Conduct large parallel searches.
y Efficiently handle massive amounts of working memory.
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Capabilities of a DNA Computer
y With the use of DNA logic gates, a DNA computer the size of a teardrop will
be more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputer.
y DNA computers will be much smaller than silicon-based computers as one
pound of DNA chips can hold all the information stored in all the computers in
the world.
y A DNA chip less than the size of a dime will have the capacity to perform 10
trillion parallel calculations at one time as well as hold ten terabytes of data.
yThe capacity to perform parallel calculations, much more trillions of parallelcalculations, is something silicon-based computers are not able to do.
y A complex mathematical problem that could take silicon-based computers
thousands of years to solve can be done by DNA computers in hours.
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Disadvantages of DNA Computer
y It requires human assistance.
y Occasionally slower-Simple problems are solved much
faster on electronic computers.
y It can take longer to sort out the answer to a problem thanit took to solve the problem.
y Reliability- There is sometime errors in the pairing of
DNA strands.
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THE FUTURE!
Algorithm used by Adleman for the traveling salesman problem wassimple. As technology becomes more refined, more efficient algorithmsmay be discovered.
DNA Manipulation technology has rapidly improved in recent years, and
future advances may make DNA computers more efficient.
The University of Wisconsin is experimenting with chip-based DNAcomputers.
DNA computers are unlikely to feature word processing, emailing andsolitaire programs.
Instead, their powerful computing power will be used for areas ofencryption, genetic programming, language systems, and algorithms or byairlines wanting to map more efficient routes. Hence better applicable in
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THANKYOU!
It will take years to develop a practical, workable DNA
computer.
ButLets all hope that this DREAM comes true!!!
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References
y Molecular computation of solutions to combinatorialproblems- Leonard .M. Adleman
y Introduction to computational molecular biology byjoao setubal and joao meidans -Sections 9.1 and 9.3
y DNA computing, new computing paradigms byG.Paun, G.Rozenberg, A.Salomaa-chapter 2
y Tech-FAQ, Retrieved January 2, 2012, from www.tech-faq.com/dna-computer.html
y HowStuffWorks , Retrieved January 2, 2012, fromwww.computer.howstuffworks.com/dna-computer1.html
yWikipedia, Retrieved January 2, 2012, fromwww.wikipedia.org
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