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Scientists build DNA based computer
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"
Are they sure that the calculation just isn't off by .2%?
99.8% accuracy is fine for a proof-of-concept demo, but as always, the devil is in the details. This won't be a useful technology until it can do a hell of a lot better than that. I certainly wouldn't trust my PC if it made mistakes on .2% of its calculations. Who knows, it might take several years to develop a really usable version of this, or it might never get into the market at all if, say, other technologies can beat it to market or have better cost/performance ratios.
Man, a whole galaxy could have signed up for free AOL service with the DNA I just jetissoned...
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I am no scientist... but a trillion of these can perform a billion operations? is this correct? can someone explain WHY it takes 1000 computers per operation?
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
DAMN IT!
Is your company running tools written by ma
Now I'll have to buy anti-biotics for my computer when it gets a virus! I wonder if it will be covered by an HMO?
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
but the kids only have a 60% accuracy. My wife blames me...
:(
oh wait, I guess that's what I am.
Does anyone else have a problem with using the fundamental building block of life to power a computer? How will they know that the source code to WindowsGM isn't the same as, say, HIV?
I know it will probably all be in vitro, but what's going to protect me from getting infected with a stray snipped of 3D rotation code?
Eek! Gives a whole new meaning to "virus".
*meep*
And then alert a repair mechanism when errors are found. It would probably need to survey other cells to compare results.
Very interesting that they have gotten to the point where they can cut portions of DNA and test them to identify which functions they can perform enough to make a rudimentary "computer".
Again, interesting - but one must wonder if this work is something inherently creative that should be protected by intellectual property laws, or if it is merely observing and splicing naturally occuring processes.
It may be a premature concern though - but ultimately, what difference is there other than scope in using DNA-oriented systems to create protein computers, and today's circuit-based fabrication technology? How long will the prior art of nature stand before companies will own DNA sequences?
Ryan Fenton
from the article:
When a trillion computers run together they are capable of performing a billion operations
So, if does that mean that there are 1,000 tiny computers for each individual operation, or is some translator mixing up his numbers?
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
1. Imagine a BEOWULF cluster of these!!!
Ha ha.. I've heard that joke so many times, it's started to be really funny. I even say it at bars... someone points out the nice rack on this girl who walks in and I yell out "IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THOSE!" and everyone gets real quiet and stares at me like I'm crazy or something....
- kengineer
"99.8 percent accuracy"
"Yikes, I've got the blue gunk of death!"
Maybe we could have intelligent robots going around fix rougue cells. This is already a procedure for many diseases, but now the DNA injected could be 'smart' DNA and know exactly what to change and what not too.
Doctor: I'm sorry about the third arm growing out of the middle of your chest, Mr. Smith. It seems that the anti-cancer robot programming had an off by one error, causing every cell in your body to be mutated in various unknown ways.
Yipes!
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Absolutely, every couple of months there is a new news article about a ground-breaking new type of computer. But each time, it's basically just "hey look, we managed to get this to do something that kinda looks like basic computer operations". Quantom computers sound really cool, DNA computers sound really cool, but where is a reasonable long term plan? Where's something to actually get excited about?
I can build AND, NOT and XOR gates out of cats, mice and string. I can string a thousand of these gates together... but i won't be able to install an OS on it in any practical way.
I'll be excited when one of these test-tubes can play mp3s, compile my kernel, and send me instant messages telling me what website i can see AVIs of Britney Spears being ravaged by high school football players at. Until then, i just don't care.
The abiility to do FLOPs does not a Turing Machine make.
lysergically yours
Oh!....Oh!....Oh *Shit*! We're fucking surrounded by solar powered DNA based machines! They're everywhere! I have to put my tinfoil hat back on now.
I don't even know why I read the news anymore.
I don't even know why you bother to post here anymore.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
"Since we don't know how to effectively modify these machines or create new ones just yet, the trick is to find naturally existing machines that, when combined, can be steered to actually compute,"
DNA can be used in it's natural state to represent data. But once they figure out how to code DNA at will, then that would seem to be a breakthrough analogous to the the early punchcard computers.
After that, the DNA transistor, right?
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'
99.8% accurate.
Which means it'll make 2 million mistakes every second.
I think my bank and government use these.
The Internet is generally stupid
...the errors are not systematic. Do the calculation two times and compare and your unidentified errors drops 0.00004th of the whole (provided comparison procedure is not flawed), do it three times and it drops to 0.0000008 and so on. Once possible errors are identified, redoing them, say, ten more times to make sure is not difficult (as you only would have n*0.002 of them, n being the repetition count.) I'm sure one can devise a better system for error correction, but even this crude one would perform satisfatorily.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Don't worry--if the viruses you postulate become reality, they will depend on us for their existence. Being intelligent, they will no doubt farm us as we farm cows. You will have a place in the new order.
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.
They could plausibly get INaccuracy of .2% to the Nth power. Whoops That's more like it. :-)
Here is a link to a Wired article that talks about moletronics, but also specifically mentions applications of tiny computers. How about we equip planes with 10,000 microscopic black boxes instead of relying on just 1?
c s.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/moletroni
I guess the next thing is to figure out dna error correction... think of the medical benefits of that one
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Many of you have been complaining that .2% error is pretty bad, but there is a pretty damn easy way to fix this, just compute all the data twice, if you find that two bits don't match, calculate that bit again. Sure it halves the efficiency, but cosnidering how small they already are, and i assume, cheap, it doens't matter
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
How do you tell which ones are which?
That's Nothing. The other night the star quarterback and the head cheerleader created a practical DNA computer in the back of his Chevy pickup.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hmm DNA based computers hey...
I can see it now:
A couple of geeks at a network game session comparing their hardware. And then one of them yells out "You reckon that's good! Check out this puppy!"
And then his PC is ACTUALLY a puppy but with like a USB port and stuff poking out all over it.
I don't know why, but that would be awesome!
:)
eh, 3 billion base pairs.
4 possibilities per base pair, which means that a byte (the computer byte) can hold the info of 4 base pair. Therefore the human genome is roughly 750MB (fits on a CD with a bit of compression).
It's how it's used that counts.
sic transit gloria mundi
It's my understanding that all they are doing is allowing molecules to combine into a tremendous number of configurations, then filtering out the ones that don't have the characteristics they'd expect from a solution to a particular problem. Then they just verify the shape of the structure of the remaining molecules. It's only slightly more sophisticated than having a trillion monkeys typing on a trillian keyboards (except in this case, they know when a monkey is close to the answer they want).
It might be possible to solve NP-complete problems in this fashion (i.e. is there a hamiltonian circuit containing N vertices in this molecule's structure), but the amount of time and effort needed to set up the system and filter out the results does not seem worthwhile. Further, this requires that they already know what kind of structure they expect as an answer (in order to filter it out from the rest), so it will only work on problems where they already have a good guess about the answer. Not something you can expect to see as a general problem-solver.
In otherwords, I don't expect to see Apache running on this anytime, ever. Might be interesting for conjecture, but my money's on quantum computing for this kind of problem solving (at least q-bits have a chance of being interfaced with existing computer hardware).
The big stumbling block with DNA computing is setting up the problems and interpreting the answers. For now, the hardware consists of arrays of test-tubes, DNA sources (mouse DNA does some great stuff), and enzymes which are used to setup and unlock/interpret the results based on how you setup the initial problem. Genetic computers, like life, will always deal with squishy, fluidic stuff, and as such should never, ever find itself in day-to-day home use.
There is an incredible paradigm differential between established Von-Neuman computer science and biological computing systems that everyone should equate the complexity of DNA computing with Quatumn Physics, and know that even when people think they "get it", they don't. Really-Really.
Anyone worried about having to feed their computers should relax, and consider themsevles very very lucky to live long enough to see that happen. Long before consumers have access to DNA-based computing, the NSF and Military will be using it as an excuse for billions in black-ops appropriations and maybe even declare it off-limits to the market once they figure out how to use it to crack encryption key namespaces.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
So with a recommended hard disk size of 1.5 Gigs, Windows XP requires twice as much information as your average human being. Really puts a perspective on MS bloat.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those?!
I am a Beowulf cluster of those.
Click here.
That's it, mod me up, you can do it.
that kinda made me think that 'rack-mount' can have some very different meanings...
sic transit gloria mundi
or averaging. if 2+2=4 10 million times, but 2+2=5 only 20 times, the system could compare... this kind of thing isnt my forte, but I imagine those with more practical computer architecture experience could tell you.
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Really though, the fact they can do this at all is quite amazing. Early electronic computers were plagued with similar issues (such as the infamous 'bug', a moth got stuck in a relay). Perhaps a speck of dust in the test tube threw off a few computations...the modern equivalent of that pesky moth.
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whos to say they werent using sound logic? Perhaps a contamination in the test tube caused problems. cosmic rays from space wreak havoc with electronics all the time. I guarantee your computer (as all electronic devices) is having single bit errors as we speak. But thanks to error correction, it keeps going. There is no such thing as a 100% infallable computer, which is why its the holy grail.
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DNA is not comprised of cells, nor are cells comprised of DNA. DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid, as everybody knows. DNA is simply a molecule formed from four different base molecules that have a tendency to bond together in a spiral fashion. DNA is not alive, nor does it magically spring into life. It's simply one type of amino acid. Amino acids are found in lots of places. Arguing that DNA is a lifeform is like arguing that sugar or a cake recipe is a cake. Life on earth just happens to use DNA as design instructions for how to build itself.
"I don't mean to get off on a rant here," but I can't find anything intelligible in your post. No offense.
A solution to the problem with music today
I prefer to plug and play...
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Certainly it's more reliable than the Windows 3.1 calculator. :-)
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Too many people are saying this "computer" will make 20,000,000 mistakes per second. Rather than thinking of it as a computer, why not think of it as an artificial brain. Your brain certainly makes mistakes. Why should an artificial one be any better?
Wow, just imagine a trillion Israeli scienists in a test tube. It's a snug fit, but in such close proximity, they still perform a billion operations per second!
I think we should build another DNA computer and put a whole international consortium of scientists into it! Just imagine the results.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
I think that's .2% per operation. At one billion operations per second, that means there's a .998^1000000000 chance that no errors occur in one second of processing. According to Mathematica, that's number that looks like 0.00000...[insert 869000 zeros here]...1.
To put this into perspective (sort of), the odds of completing a full second of execution without an error are about the same as winning the Powerball lottery 177,329 consecutive times (assuming they'd keep letting you buy a ticket every week for 3,410 years). If you prefer poker, it's like being dealt 150,000 consecutive royal flushes (well-shuffled deck, fair dealer, etc.).
Of course, I was actually talking about bugs in the software, assuming that the DNA computers executed all of their calculations perfectly. What are the odds of a complex piece of software having no bugs? Now there's a *really* small probability.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"Since we don't know how to effectively modify these machines or create new ones just yet, the trick is to find naturally existing machines that, when combined, can be steered to actually compute."
This sounds more like learning to control chemical reactions than building computers! They used an existing "computer", they didn't build it.
However, I posted my comments on the issue hours ago, and I would like to place them here for the sake of, um, conversation in a more communal setting than a personal weblog:
from a CS perspective, this does NOT solve NP.
:) )
why? because you switch from an exponential time brute-force method to an exponential cpu-number brute force method.
and practically, there's a limit to the number of molecules you can use.
so the issue is not CS one: it means you have a much higher n in which the problem starts being impracticle.
e.g. you will probably need a cipher the size of a DNA molecule for your future PGP (no, wankers of the world, your own is not good enough, since 99% is like any othres'
Working for necessity's mother.
They will think twice, since the virus might infect the maker as well
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Although the error rate seems rather high (0.2%) for a computer, there are all sorts of things that could be done to combat this. Someone mentioned something about CD-ROM read errors, and I'd like to expand it. On a data CD-ROM, well over half of each CD-ROM sector is used for error correcting code. Thus, CD-ROMs make lots of errors, but they're fixed before they get to the computer. Also, many uses of computers can handle the occasional error. Visualization programs could benifet greatly from the increased speed, and any uncaught errors would simpy be seen as the occasional visual defect. If the error rate is brought down enough (as it would be with good error checking) a human observer wouldn't even notice the rare glitch. Similarly, scientific simulations, which already take into account the somewhat random nature of physics, could deal with simulation errors the same way they deal with instrumentation errors: through repeated trials and finding trends.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You must not understand genetics. These dna computers are just DNA. They have none of the machinery necessary to make proteins. Proteins are needed for a cell or virus to do anything. Proteins can only be made in an extremely complicated process involving DNA. There is no way that a clump of dna will destroy the world.
Thats like saying your piss will self-assemble and kill you.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
It's possible that the rate of accuracy could greatly be increased if different scientists/programmers/what have you were to undertake the task. Given that both the 'hardware' and 'software' of this project was figuratively 'programmed' (are we going to need to invent new terms for this type of computer?), I suspect that the error rate could be decreased by more development and/or testing.
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