JUL 24

We all know we have the power to make the world a bit greener – and many feel that includes messing with DNA for environmental improvements, or just better efficiency for our gadgets. Now there’s new hope that DNA could play a major role in making computers run with little or no external power.

Researchers at the University of Toyama say they have created the world’s first stable artificial DNA molecules, made from mainly artificial bits to resemble their natural counterparts. Their findings were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society yesterday. Scientists from all over the world have been trying to do this for the promise of using artificial DNA to create biotechnology materials, including powerful DNA computers.

As Ruchi Mallya, an analyst on the use of technology in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology with Datamonitor, explains, such computers are constructed using DNA as software and enzymes as hardware, rather than traditional silicon-based components. This could then hopefully be the start of a new kind of external biological information storage system.

DNA molecules are similar to computer hard drives: they save information about an individual’s genes, but they have one advantage in that they have the potential to perform calculations faster than any man-made computers. The computer on which you’re reading this article is using nowhere near as many simultaneous actions as your DNA molecules required to make reading this article possible.

“In addition, unlike today's PCs, DNA computers require minimal or no external power sources as they run on internal energy produced during cellular reactions,” says Mallya. “There is a huge amount of potential for a computer that does not need to be plugged in the implications this has for laptops and true mobility are endless.”

The goal is to one day integrate DNA into a computer chip to create a biochip. That will make standard computers faster and more energy efficient. “DNA computers could potentially be the future of green IT,” she says. Research team leader Masahiko Inouye says the findings could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers and other high-tech advances. Already DNA has been harnessed to create simple electronic circuits but the University of Toyama scientists have taken it one step further by stitching together four entirely new artificial DNA.

Mallya says there are still years of research ahead, but she anticipates that companies such as Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystems might begin investing in research that emphasizes artificial DNA and its possible applications, shaking a potential Pandora’s Box next to their ears.

Via LiveScience, ComputerWeekly, Guardian, ScienceNews; Photo via jurvetson

Comments (10)

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Exciting and Scary, all at once
written by paizlea, July 24, 2008

Wow, living computers. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or scared. Guess I'll be both!

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Quite Impressive
written by Gustavion, July 24, 2008

This is very exciting news. It's going to be interesting to see how technology allows us to live greener lifestyles in the coming years.

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written by Alisha, July 25, 2008

It sounds amazing, but a bit too good to be true in the "there is no free lunch" sense. No matter how efficient, cellular reactions require fuel...in the form of carbohydrates, fat, and proteins. That's our food - an increasingly expensive fuel. But, computers don't have to live as long as we would like to ourselves - those artificial sweetner folks can probably whip something up in the lab that will do the trick.

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written by Jacob, July 25, 2008

With computers containing living cells in the works, we're getting closer and closer to being the Flintstones. Eventually all our gadgets will be living, although sadly they wont have witty comments to make when we mis-use them like on tv.

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written by Doug, July 25, 2008

The only calculation using DNA that I've ever actually heard of was one that set up specially-configured DNA fragments, let them interact with each other in a solution, and then engaged in a laborious process to read out the answer, which was in the form of a certain number of DNA fragments that had latched on to each other in the correct way.

So the I/O of this "DNA computer" was quite slow, but then there was the real catch: it couldn't solve problems of any significant size without needing a ridiculous amount of material. The DNA fragment interactions were essentially enumerating all possible combinations of the input data, in order to find the solution. As anyone at all familiar with algorithms knows, problems that are actually interesting can really explode in terms of the number of possible combinations. A problem that would be solvable on a regular computer using an intelligent algorithm might require more DNA than can fit into the known universe, using that brute-force approach.

That example was from around around 1994; I haven't heard a single hint of any other kind of "DNA computer" since then, and I think I keep up with the science & computing scenes pretty well.

Certainly, this article here doesn't say anything -- the event reported on was the creation of artificial DNA molecules; after that, the article somehow leaps into a fuzzy, speculative notion of "DNA computers", as if artificial DNA would have anything to do with that. Then it jumps from there into somehow saying that such computers could run without any external energy source.

Yeah, right.

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Hmm, not quite right.
written by Grus i Salaten, July 27, 2008

DNA molecules just store information on how to construct other cells. It's the cells' recipe. DNA will not bring any superbrain computer onto the stage, because they are not neurons, they don't do any thinking. DNA can teach us a lot about "natural" storage though.

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what's DNA computer
written by jay, July 29, 2008

i had just came to know about artificial dna but i did not understand this dna computer could u please give more information. what i know is dna is storage form of genetic information and new stratiges made is of artificial dna but dna computers.
what is the relation between DNA and computer every body speaking about this topic but no one relates both

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ummm...
written by Jene, August 29, 2008

What is so wrong with the computers we have? What's wrong with just improving on those rather than relying on "Artificial DNA" to generate a computer.

Is it really necessary?

No.
-_-

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Uhm, no
written by 0chance, January 09, 2009

I do not think the 'Brain Computer' would be a good alternative for the computers we have today. First of all, yes our brains make many calculations, but most of them are wasted on tasks that are done much more simply on a silicone chip. Another benefit of the silicone chip is that all we have to feed in is electrons, so the chip can be closed off from many potentially dangerous things, with an input of glucose (I assume) among other things, the chip would be vulnerable to damage very easily. Also, if I use the example of the human brain, each one has the same basic structure of what areas do which sets of processes, but the actual calculations are unique to each brain.

Also, I don't want my computer to have the chance to become sentient. I, Robot is not the future for me!

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ranking
written by ranking, February 16, 2012

#1,2 - naive initial reaction to article, not much substance
#3 - kindly older gentlemen with basic understanding of cellular processes
#4 - not sure if troll or just luddite
#5 - Someone with an actual degree
#6, 7 - woosh, woosh with bad grammar
#8, 9 - the same kind of people that complain about Facebook UI changes

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