Cellular computing - Molecular computing

Cellular computing - Molecular computing - DNA computing

Hi,

DNA computing, this is a topic in which my professor asked me and my friend to give a lecture. We gave our best and here you can find a summary of our lecture.

DNA computing: It's computing with the use of DNA, in stead of the normal microprocessors used.

Why DNA or cells or biological molecules for computation?

I could give you three major reasons:

1) Large storage capacity

2) High parallelism

3) Speed

Large Storage capacity: DNA could store large information comparing the normal storage devices used like CDs. If we store the information in DNA in CDs and arranga it like a thread. That thread could round the Earth by 374 times!!!! Can you imagine the capcity of DNA now?

High parallelism: DNA could process in several ways parellely.

Speed: All biological reactions happen with in seconds. So, using biological molecules can increase the speed of computing to a greater extent.

Okay, but, how biological molecules could be used for computing?
The basics behind the computing is the usage of logic gates.

AND , OR gates are used. Cells can also behave as logic gates.

This is possible by a technique called CID - Chemically Inducible Dimerization.

This tool takes advantage of natural biological mechanisms that
bring together two proteins into a complex in the presence of an
enzyme
• FRP and FKBP joined by rapamycin.GAI and GID1 by gibberellins.
• OR gate, FRB and GAI were bound together at the cell membrane,
while FKBP and GID1 were bound together floating freely in
the cell. Adding either rapamycin, gibberellins, or both to cells
brought the freely floating complex to the one at the cellular
membrane, linking up the matching proteins and triggering the
output signal.
• AND gate, the researchers placed just GAI at the cell membrane,
with just FRB and complexes of FKBP and GID1 free-floating in the
cell. This system required all four proteins to link up to produce
membrane ruffling, which wouldn't occur without both input
chemicals.

This look great isn't it?

DISADVANTAGES of this DNA computing:
• Just newly developing
• Some problem regarding incorporating the
circuit into the host
• Need a manual control

I had a great time during the lecture session with my friend Priya :)
We confused our class mates as much as possible :P :P

Any doubts? kindly comment, I'll try to answer. Bye.. Take care!

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