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DNA Solves Million-Answer NP-Complete Problem

Posted by timothy on from the combinations dept.

cybrpnk writes: "A 'DNA computer' has been used for the first time to find the only correct answer from over a million possible solutions to a computational problem. Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California in the US and colleagues used different strands of DNA to represent the 20 variables in their problem, which could be the most complex task ever solved without a conventional computer. Details to be published in Science."

1 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is this new? by Lictor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well it certianly isn't the "first" DNA computer to solve a problem. However, it *is* the first one to solve a problem that would be seriously non-trivial for a human to do by hand.