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Scientists build DNA based computer

Posted by chrisd on from the computer?-you're-soaking-in-it dept.

Archangel Michael writes "Israeli scientists have built a DNA computer so tiny that a trillion of them could fit in a test tube and perform a billion operations per second with 99.8 percent accuracy. Yahoo News has the story"

3 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Dear God by sabinm · · Score: 2, Informative

    sorry, but dna is not exactly life. It's sort of like saying "what if a bunch of sugary acid got together and turned sour?" all the sweet stuff in the world would be in danger! No more Mountain Dew or Coffee! What about jelly donuts? Bedlam! chaos! The price of kerplatz skyrocktets (apologies to daffy duck {the scarlet pumpernickel})

    DNA are heredetary databases used to make genes, used to make protiens, used to make cells, used to make organisms, used to make multi organ system organisms ad nauseum. the chances of DNA taking over the world are less than a bunch of worms rising up ruling.

    --
    http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
  2. More Details by Great_Geek · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Yahoo article is fairly content-free (and take a lot of space doing it). Here is the link to the the Weismann Institue abstract. http://www.weizmann.ac.il/math/users/lbn/public_ht ml/new_pages/Abstract.html
    Note that the 99.8% is what the abstract calls "Transition Fidelity" and is unclear what it means. I take it to mean that from input to output, the answer as read, is corret 99.8% of the time.

    It is interesting that they claim to be implementing a Turing machine. Previous uses of DNA has been mostly for the Travelling Salesman Problem with has a (more or less) natural mapping to DNA.

  3. Or for the non Yahoo! India link... by caryw · · Score: 2, Informative

    Click here.

    That's it, mod me up, you can do it.