DNA

COMPUTERS

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 Introduction to DNA computers

 Store Billions of time more information.

 High computing speed.
 Information is encoded within ‘Deoxiribo-

nucleic Acid’.
 First Demonstrated By Adleman in 1994.

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 What is DNA?
 DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid
 DNA represents the genetic blueprint of

living creatures
 DNA contains “instructions” for assembling cells
 Every cell in human body has a complete

set of DNA
 DNA is unique for each individual

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Structure of DNA
 Strands of DNA are long polymers
of millions of linked nucliotides.
 Nitrogen bases .
 5’ to 3’ direction.
 Double Helix form.

 Purine and pyrimidine bases.

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 Operations on DNA
 Merge
 Annealing
 Melt

 Separation by length -Electophoresis.

 Separation by sequences
 Copying / Amplification
 Append
 Detect

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 How DNA computers will work??
 Development of logic gates made of DNA.

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Concepts
 The information is stored in the form of
nucleotide sequences.
 Logic operations are obtained by the breaking

and making of new linkages.

 All the operations are done using certain

enzymes in a controlled way.

 Unlike conventional computers which use

BASE2 computation, it uses BASE4

computation.
 Enzymes such as ligase are used as the

hardware and the single or double stranded

DNA molecules as the software.
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 Specifications
 One pound of DNA has the capability to
store more information than all the
electronic computers ever built.
 One cm3 of DNA can hold approximately
10 terabytes of data
 DNA computer the size of a teardrop
would be more powerful than the worlds
most powerful supercomputer

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 Evolution of DNA Computers (1)
 Began in 1994 when Dr. Leonard Adleman
wrote the paper “Molecular computation of
solutions to combinatorial problems”.
 He then carried out this experiment

successfully – although it took him days to do

so!
 DNA computers moved from test tubes onto

gold plates.

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 DNA
computer on A DNA chip
a Gold Plate First practical DNA
computer unveiled in
2002.
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 Evolution of DNA Computers (2)
 In 2000 a memory device in E. coli out of two
inverters was built.
 First practical DNA computer unveiled in

2002. Used in gene analysis.

 Self-powered DNA computer unveiled in

2003.
 Biological computer developed that could be

used to fight cancers.

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 Similarities between DNA and
conventional electronic
computer

 Transformation of data
 Manipulation of data
 Computation ability

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Differences between DNA and
conventional electronic
computer
 Size
 Representation of data
 Material
 Methods of calculation

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 Advantages of DNA Computers

 Parallelism
 Memory capacity
 Low power dissipation
 Clean, cheap and available
 Small size

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 Drawbacks
 Occasionally slow
 Information non transmittable
 DNA has a half-life.
 Application specific
 Manual intervention by human is

required
 Requires constant supply of proteins

and enzymes

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 Applications

 DNA-to-DNA applications

 Storage and associative memory

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 Conclusion and Future Prospects
 DNA computers have enormous potential,
especially for medical purposes as well as
data processing applications.

 Itis still science fiction but implanting

computer programs in to living creatures may
not be far away.

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References

 http://www.dna.htm/
 www.howstuffswork.com
 www.dna.com
 www.gene.com

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QUERIES???

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