Slashdot Mirror
Computer Made From DNA And Enzymes
develop writes "Some folks from Israel have created a computer that runs on DNA and enzymes and is supposedly 100,000 times faster then today's PCs. Information at National Geographic, Telegraph UK and United Press." According to the National Geographic story, this DNA-based computer "can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC." However, be aware that most of this is still future tense, and what these researchers have now is just a proof-of-concept.
"computer made FOM" . . .?
How lovely.
funny munging
330 trillion calculations per second? Impressive, but can it run Doom 3?
This isn't really old.
l
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-01o.htm
just to name one...
If I had one I'd have the FIRST POST!
:gasp: not foam DNA and enzymes
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
Earlier today I hawked up a loogie in the parking lot. While at the moment it is only a puddle of goo, or "proof of concept", I predict that this collection of DNA and enzymes will someday be capable of performing over 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
I can not wait to see the custom case mods
for DNA computers.
Just imagine, neon ligted, chrome tube organic waste extractor trays... OOooo...
I wonder when they'll get up to the computational speeds of the human brain. Hmm-mmm.
E000-VB14-G8RY
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those machines...wait a minute, I am one!
Could this be a stepping-stone to one day being able to create simple life forms from scratch?
Additionally, if a DNA computer gets a virus, could it spread to humans?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Is going to claim he invented this!!
I hear Feed Only Memory is the future of storage.
I hope to get one soon.
..let's hope Slashcode will support it for headline verification !
I don't think I'd be responsible enough to remember to feed my computer.
and is supposedly 100,000 times faster then today's PCs
Obviously this number depends on what task you assign it.
Now we can finally learn the answer to Life, the Universe... and Everything!
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
In Soviet Russia, we can only imagine a Beowulf cluster of these, you insensitive clod.
It may perform 330 trillion operations per second, but it has NO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS for that computing power. (Read the stories).
;-)
Granted that it's interesting....but it's not much further along than quantum computing.
Also, I'm wondering if Guinness would recognize my computer where I mix two liquid chemicals together and they change color as a computer that can switch froms 0s to 1s more-or-less instantly and on a massively parallel scale
-psy
they should have put this quote in the FRONT of the article so we don't get all excited over nothing. saves a lot of reading too.
btw - I wonder how they will allow interation (no nasty thoughts please) to a DNA computer; actually - how do they make "JMP" instructions in DNA? enzymes don't just skip a few million pairs for shits and giggles. told it to do so...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
If an organic computer is vapourware, does it smell like a fart?
Trolling is a art,
These DNA computers can solve NP complete problems in polynomial time (because they can try combinatorially huge numbers of solutions simultaneously), and if either they or quantum
computers ever become practical, public key
cryptography will be crackable.
You have been warned...
What are you talking about? The massive parallelism of the brain makes it perform computations much faster than fifteen year old electronics.
E000-VB14-G8RY
i read this hour ago and was thinking about posting it! but because of my past failures backed out
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
the tech people israel are the best in the world.
if only could get rid of their other problems. but with this new super computer who knows?...
What would that make me? Am I an android and I didn't know it?
Are we creating transformers that are half man, half machine? Code alone is not life. Unless you are a virus. I'm confused enough about the ethics of bioengineering. Not saying this is bad, it is very good.
We need to know CHEMISTRY vs. BIOLOGY. That is what biochemistry is! This opens up a wonderful new field of study with this new computational perspective.
I suggest you read Slashdot
100,000 times? How much time will it waste converting to decimal?
Does anybody read these antidecimal rants?
National Geographic talking about the limitations of the new concept.
"The device can check whether a list of zeros and ones has an even number of ones. The computer cannot count how many ones are in a list, since it has a finite memory and the number of ones might exceed its memory size. Also, it can only answer yes or no to a question. "
Don't computers already have a finite memory? And aren't binary numbers just a long series of yes/no questions?
Heh, the new DNA revolution ;)
develop writes "Some folks from Israel have created a computer that runs on DNA and enzymes and is supposedly 100,000 times faster then today's PCs. Information at National Geographic, Telegraph UK and United Press." According to the National Geographic story, this DNA-based computer "can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC." However, be aware that most of this is still future tense, and what these researchers have now is [b]still[/b] just a proof-of-concept.
while wasting time between classes one day at the university bookstore, i was reading a book on fractals. i swear i read that someplace in a Mandelbrot fractal (maybe it was mandelbrot, maybe some other fractal) the value of pi is somehow "defined".
anyway, trees, being fractal-like in nature, have been computing pi longer than we have maybe?
Yes, I know. The brain benefits from being a cluster of computational units. Fifteen years ago I could have set up a similar cluster of computers and achieved the same speeds. You need to consider your analogy a little bit more closely before you launch it.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Completely false. The massive parallelism of the brain allows it to do parallel operations quickly (pattern recognition, etc) The switching speed of the brain is much much slower than todays transistors, making it dogmeat compared to a modern CPU for raw computing power.
can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC
Yes, except there's only one thing you can do with a DNA "computer"- compare one thing to another. It's just a glorified chemical reaction, folks. Move along.
Nevermind the setup time involved...
Incidentally, This is very, very old news- I remember reading about this years ago, a bunch of US researchers beat these guys to the punch by quite a bit.
First the little transmitter, now a little double helix. Two new icons in one day. Wow. Will we get LOTR next?
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
And how many Palestinians will they murder with this new toy?
That the next time one of the nitwit end users on my network mindlessly opens an AOL foward, they might catch ebola?
Please tell me where to send my $$$. I want to invest.
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these. It'll probably be too tiny to see, but it will still be a Beowulf Cluster!
What if you have one of these and it looks like algae, and you keep it in a fish tank?
"Hey, What happened to my computer! It's gone!" "I didn't do anything, I just cleaned the fish tank!"
And last of all, can it play Ogg?
LFS. Have you built your system today?
The unique properties of DNA make it a fundamental building block in the fields of supramolecular chemistry, nanotechnology, nano-circuits, molecular switches, molecular devices, and molecular computing. In our recently introduced autonomous molecular automaton, DNA molecules serve as input, output, and software, and the hardware consists of DNA restriction and ligation enzymes using ATP as fuel. In addition to information, DNA stores energy, available on hybridization of complementary strands or hydrolysis of its phosphodiester backbone. Here we show that a single DNA molecule can provide both the input data and all of the necessary fuel for a molecular automaton. Each computational step of the automaton consists of a reversible software molecule/input molecule hybridization followed by an irreversible software-directed cleavage of the input molecule, which drives the computation forward by increasing entropy and releasing heat. The cleavage uses a hitherto unknown capability of the restriction enzyme FokI, which serves as the hardware, to operate on a noncovalent software/input hybrid. In the previous automaton, software/input ligation consumed one software molecule and two ATP molecules per step. As ligation is not performed in this automaton, a fixed amount of software and hardware molecules can, in principle, process any input molecule of any length without external energy supply. Our experiments demonstrate 3 x 1012 automata per l performing 6.6 x 1010 transitions per second per l with transition fidelity of 99.9%, dissipating about 5 x 10-9 W/l as heat at ambient temperature.
..geek ports NetBSD code to DNA and Enzyme based computer, which then ports itself into SkyNet(tm), and obliterates human population with mechanical death!
WTF? Has the world gone mad?
I am made from DNA and enzymes!
My brain performs more than 330 trillion ops/sec (stuff like image analysis, speech recognition, "AI",...)
AND YOU DARE CALL ME "just a proof-of-concept"!?!?
Welcome to the miracle of birth (and cloning). This is the 21st century!
Listen, buddy. I'm the result of billions of years in the evolutionary compile-link-debug cycle. So just show some bloody respect. Would you like to see my proof-of-concept gross-human-mutilation firsthand? No? Then keep your childish insults to yourself!
(from Israel ... hmmm ... do they cut the PS/2 port off the end of the keyboard cable? *just kidding, folks* )
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
Here's a fact for you.. all major tax cuts have resulted in an increase in tax revenue. Liberals are too dumb to observe history. If liberals would take a simple econ course in school they'd know why.
One day this beautifull puddle of goo will evolve into something wonderfull. By then it will be able to massively execute in parrallel and become capable of abstract thinking. It will have reached a new level of understanding and power. No wait, we can already make those! All it takes is a little love!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
...when do I get my new CUMputer??
To understand all the hype, here is an article about how DNA computing works. DNA Computing, interestingly, was first proposed by Prof. Len Adleman (of RSA fame), who used it to solve the famous travelling salesman problem for seven cities. He encoded the cities in DNA such that only valid tours could react and form longer strands. The reaction was instant and presto - he had a solution (pun unintended ;)) in a gazillionth of a second.
Here is the bad news. The solution to the problems might be instant, but programmability and reading the output are still headaches. It is interesting to note that it took Adleman several days to read the answer even though the DNA computer "figured out" the answer in no time. But its a promising technology that would be refined in future no doubt.
-Dracken
Do you need a website upgrade?
Will the Playstation 3 seriously use this? I heard them talk about it using it in the past.
I was first introduced to DNA computing by Leonard M. Adleman's article Molecular Computation of Solutions to Combinatorial Problems which describes using DNA computers to solve problems such as the notorious Traveling Salesman problem.
The basic idea is to coerce a ton of DNA into producing random potential solutions to the problem, and to then use chemical processes to select "good" solutions in mass. Since the space of possible solutions to Traveling Salesman problems of any reasonable size is tremendous (larger than the national debt expressed in pesos) DNA computing has an edge over traditional methods, because solutions are easy to generate and then weed out.
Unfortunately, this is really just a gigantic parallel processor - with each strand of DNA the memory of a processor induced by the chemical manipulations, and a small subset of useful algorithms are parallelizable (can be broken up into small "chunks" that can be computed independently and tied back for a larger result.
The immense benefit that this technology will have will be in fields like evolutionary computation. Evolutionary computation relies upon generating large populations of solutions, and then applying simple rules (which could be chemically encoded) to "improve" the generation, towards the pursuit of some ultimate goal. This could be training a neural network to predict coronary artery disease, or optimizing the design of a jet engine without tackling fluid dynamics - truly wondrous!
Until you can program such a system to solve any problem a normal computer can (modulo some size, as no real computer has infinite storage), you can't call it a computer.
I do think it's a great achievement, but I don't like the "marketing paint".
The Raven
It's hard to tell from the limited detail in the articles, but this just sounds like what's been done previously, only with a larger number of molecules. The nature of DNA computation as it exists severely limits the real-world usefulness of DNA computing. It's nothing like a general purpose CPU. It involves (at least) several hours to manufacture a bunch of DNA to do a one-off run of your algorithm. Basically, it would be very adept at the any computing tasks that could be effectively addressed by a beowulf cluster of a few billion Intel 4004s, if there are any such tasks. Photonics is the most likely face of computing in the future, with quantum computing filling the niches that only it can fill.
For great justice.
Im curious to know how these compare to quantum computers.
...is here . Quite terse, but what can you really expect when you've only got 6 pages?
And in news just in,
INTEL creates a 2Tera htz pentum 5..
how ever this is jsut proff of concept,
dont expect to see it before 2015..
I meen come on,
theres been plenty of 'proof of concept'
about DNA/emzine computers..
its not like the proof off concept behind
something that is though to be imposible..
so right now, what they have is vaporeware??
a blueprint for something they think
'might work'
that the 'could posibly build'??
and hear was i thinking something had
been done..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
All I want to do is shop and compare prices on those damn DNA computers they're explaining to me...and what do I get for my inquisitive click?
Information on Goldtouch (MPN-GTC-4700) Keyboards. Where's the DNA in that, Mr. DealTime?
Cue The Sun...
for their selfishness and disregard for basic human rights.
May all republicans eat a tubgirl spray
I like Chicken
I like Liver
Meow mix, Meow mix please deliver
Doesn't cat food sometimes look tasty? Especially the canned meat.
if you like that, read my "meow meow meow" subjected post way way way down below
it raises an interesting question
I think they are using a BOGUS rating...
...busy signal... ...busy signal... ...cr4x1n in progr3ss... ...processing beans and jag...(dangerous combo)
I can do 100,000 different things, as I sit here and do nothing...isn't that called BOGOMIPS?
KIDNEY:
LIVER:
LYMPHNOD3S:
STOMACH:
calculate velocity of unladen western swallow carrying coconut...OVERFLOW
Kernel Panic!
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
If you read the article you'll notice that this isn't a programmable computer. It's yet another test-tube experiment in which DNA was pre-programmed to return a pre-defined result, engaged in a chemical reaction, and then the resultant data read from the DNA at a later time. So while the experiment itself likely took many months or years, they claim that "330 trillion calculations per second" were performed because that's the duration of the chemical reaction divided by the number of bits of information that were changed. You can't ever access that data and you can't program the machine, but hell, that's how long the chemical reaction took... I'm decidedly unimpressed.
Computer Made Fom DNA And Enzymes
in other words... a brain? like the one between my ears?
Well, does it? Has anyone ported it? Nope?
Next!!!
Never mind stupid Doom 3...can it run Ninnle?
Probably!
That this has been posted in a new catagory, Biotech (no, you haven't seen that funny DNA logo before on /.)
:D
Can't wait to get a ton more proof-of-concept and far-fetched stories!!
Would not a biologically powered computer be politicaly incorrect?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Well, I guess it's no different to Evolutionists thinking your loogie could eventually evolve into human life, given enough time. =)
My spermies are now frantically working hard to reproduce. I'll have a supercomputer!
:[
oh wait, they need an egg first. there is no egg
Yeah, and on page 79 is a article about a newly discovered Amazon tribe 'untouched by modern man'.
Yet the women have remarkably perky breasts..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Please fix. Thx.
Trillions of Computations per second?
Come on. Trillions of Chemical Reactions per second is more like it. I admit they were very creative to come up with a problem that could be encoded in DNA, but there is no computation going on IMO.
Vinegar and Baking Soda generate a trillions of computations per second too, but the result is always an overflow.
If this form of computer is lacking in practical computing power, then what good is it besides being a really fancy form of mould?
Another question that I am asking myself is how data is collected from the computer. Would the results be displayed as a change in color, or would it actually be something that would have to be monitored by a scientist or another computer?
I am curious as to what practical applications an impractical supercomputer may have. I can't see it as being effective for much more than the simplest of things, which are easily accomplished by a standard computer system. Seems to me as though the Israelis have re-invented the wheel. It would be nice to see another original invention, such as the UZI....
Person1: What did you do with my laptop? Those things don't just grow legs and walk away!
...
Person2: Uhm, well, uhh, this one did
In the long run, we're all dead.
I can see the adds now:
pr0n: have you fed your computer today?
Really honey, my kernel compiles were getting slower. I had to do something.
In 1994 Leonard Adleman solved a seven node instance of the Hamilton Path problem with a DNA computer. As many of you know, this problem is NP complete. That means that only exponential time algorithms (for sequential computations) are known for it. Adleman's machine ran in linear time. RSA decryption is thought (although not proven) to be NP complete. Since then, many NP complete problems have been solved in polynomial time. (I devised an algorithm for Set Cover.) The secret? Massive parrallelization requiring expontential space. Basically, there are so many DNA molecules foating around in the tube and so many enzyme that if you combine them cleverly, you can create all possible answers to a problem. You can then cull out the right answers. The expontential space is the drawback to DNA computing. There is a hard upper bound on the number of DNA molecules that can be used in a computation (for reasons I don't fully understand). It looks as if the article refers to a universal turing machine of sorts implemented in DNA. This an improvement over the previous algorithms which were just hand crafted machines.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
My brain performs more than 330 trillion ops/sec (stuff like image analysis, speech recognition, "AI",...)
The human brain has between 10 billion and 100 billion neurons. They can fire up to 100 times per second. 100 billion * 100/second is only 10 trillion per second.
So we must assume that either:
1. you have an enormous brain (3.3 trillion neurons would weigh about 50kg), or
2. that they fire very quickly, (you overclocked your brain and run around with a heatsinking hat and have to eat 20x a day) or
3. that you do some 'thinking' without using neurons.
Hmm, that last option seems to be the most reasonable. How's that working out for you, anyway?
I haven't seen this "biotech" icon before, I think it's pretty nifty. Does anyone know who designed it?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
The abstract is available here. I've taken a look at the article since I have a subscription. The system implements a finite automaton, as opposed to Adleman's research which solved a much more complicated (NP-complete) problem. Also, the error rates are definitely too high to be useful at this point, but this is still intriguing research.
Something fast enough to run Everquest.
YHBT
this dude has got a good point! someone moderate him up!
They actually implement a 2-state finite state automata with a two letter alphabet. The approach is basically something like the following. The 'hardware' is a restriction enzyme that is an offset cutter. The 'software' are pieces of DNA with 4-base DNA overhangs.
The transition table is essentially coded in the software DNA molecules. The current state of the machine and the current input symbol is coded for by a unique 4 base overhang. The software DNA has 4 base overhang to match a particular state, symbol. The software DNA binds to the input DNA, and then the restriction enzyme, since it is a 9-base offset cutter to the right, cuts the input to be in a new state. Something like the following:
Changing the number of ? spacers in the software changes where in the input you cut and therefore chooses between two of the possible set of four base overhangs for the next state. All the energy for the computation comes from breaking up the input DNA.
Based on their model, the maximum number of states possible in the FSA appears to be dependent on the size of the offset for FokI and I think it's like 5 states. (Possible to have more states with larger offset cutter?) The maximum number of automata state and input symbol combinations, since they use a 4 base overhang appears to be 4^4. So it's not quite general enough to match any regular expression, and not even close to a read/write tape for a Turing machine, but is an interesting approach.
But if it's a 'computer' that can't do some things that other computers can't do, then it isn't a computer. This is part of the definition of what a computer is. That is, no computer can do more than another.
Bitch
DNA computing isn't new but it seems no one on /. has emphasized that the breakthru is using DNA as the source of fuel as well as information.
On second though why is that a good thing. Anyone care to elucidate?
I was about to download in my pants.
And they're even better at being killed by terrorist scumbags who would rather have war than peace.
Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com
Scrape some from his face before he laps it up.
Better yet, look in Taco's nose, there's always some up there.
post post
Technically, it's Israelis.
Since I have no clue what you just said - just two questions:
.sig, this is not your specialty)
1) why in the world do you know this? (i mean, judging my the
2) where do you find the references? any data / book / website to back up / explain what you said?
thanks in advance
My life in the land of the rising sun.
*sigh* It's MacOS vs. Windows vs. Linux all over again... but this time it's Jews vs. Christians vs. Muslims.
I wonder if this computer will run all those damned quirky Christian programs a friend of mine wrote for me... Catechism XP... Communion 3.2...
Am I going to hell now? Is that question even more metaphysical given the topic?
I think I'm going to go call my Jewish best friend and beg forgiveness for being a dirty, insensitive Gentile.
what next, a computer made from common sand?
Today we're computing with Denatured Alcohol.
When will the madness end?
KFG
Hand in hand with embedded computing, we will be able to control our environment like never before.
Lots will probably say that we can do this with computers today. My response is, that some things are easy and some things are harder. Take a strong, agile man who can pass obstacles in his stride. He finds very few problems he cannot overcome. He gains confidence in his ability so tries more and moves further, and his confidence is further boosted. Now imagine a weak, clumsy man. He has great difficulty with climbing over obstacles, moving, walking, etc. He has little confidence, so even though it is possible for him to overcome certain obstacles he doesn't because it is a tedious chore for him.
With fast computers we will have less fear to use them in powerful and new ways - especially if this causes the cost of current hardware to come down.
If nobody is around to *smell* this vaporware, does it even exist?
:-(
I'm fealing a little sad right now...I *think* I just heard a toilette flush; maybe somebody lost a turtle...
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
No, the secret of Life, the Universe, and Everything cannot be found in one tenth of a joint. The secret lies in the question.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So, when one of these catches a virus, it REALLY catches a virus. Better stock up on PC-cillin.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
OKay, so in recent history, some research groups from Israel have come up with the following:
1.) Quantum computers that cracked RC5 in a few miliseconds.
2.) "True AI" like HAL that they would raise from infancy and would be sentient.
3.) "Unbreakable" encryption.
4.) DNA computers that are 100,000 faster than any desktop PC (but whoops, it's only a PoC).
There's a few more, but I cannot recall them all. These were all posted on Slashdot, but I am lazy and don't feel like using the pitiful search function here to find them. I'm sure others will remember.
So what is it with "researchers" from that country coming up with all kinds of impossible and implausible discoveries that nobody else has even come close to producing... and then we never hear from them again? Is it common practice there to create a bullshit storm to get project funding or a bigger budget? Can someone clear this up for me?
Disclaimer: I am not anti-sematic or anything, I just want to know what the deal is.
Why bother.
Dave... what are you doing Dave?
***snarf.... quaff... gorge***
my mind is going.... I...can feel it.
ATTENTION, EVERYONE...
PleasE StoP ImagininG WhaT A BeowoF ClusteR OF ThesE WoulD LooK LikE!!! IT'S BEEN DONE.
Carry on.
Actually, it's the exact same DNA as those "Muslim terrorist"... Israeli scientists have done test which prove that Jewish DNA isn't any different than that of any other "Gentile" semite... That includes the Arabs... Sorry bud!
Rabin was really good at it, for example.
yeah... or an assasin in a cell...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
My computer...? It's ALIVE !!!
$DEITY bless $NATION
Agreed. Liberals are too damn stupid to recognise facts. Maybe thats why the are not in office now.
The immense benefit that this technology will have will be in fields like evolutionary computation.
Are you trying to say that DNA could be of some practical use in genetic algorithms? That's pretty hard to swallow.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
DNA Computing reminds me of analog computing devices, where the computation is instant, because of forces that bring a physical system into equilibrium. But it's the pre-processing and post-processing that are time-consuming. Consider a bunch of uncooked spaghetti sticks in your hand. Let us further suppose their lengths are proportional to a list of numbers you have with you. Hold them vertically against a table or other flat surface and release your hand. Bam! The spaghetti sticks fall into equilibrium. Then, from this bunch, pick out spaghetti sticks in ascending order and voila, you have sorted your list of numbers. Likewise, consider 5 burettes or other calibrated water-columns whose bottoms are all connected to a common tube. Use stop-cocks to separate each water column. Fill up the burettes with water corresponding to some list of numbers you have. Release the stop-cocks and the water level in all the burettes equalizes to the average of those numbers. Fun with analog computing!
Lets see here a computer made with DNA and enzymes. This would be technology close to creatures. Then we give it an artificial intelligence so it can do work for free. Sounding familiar yet? If not then here is what could happen. They revolt, huge war, and we end up as batteries. And then we won't have to worry about doom III because the world which we are plugged into will be before Doom III. Wait, maybe doom III is a conspiricy, by the machines? Okay maybe not.
FOML: Rise to Power
My computer case is made of human skin.
If that can't compute, I don't know what can.
Some scientists predict a future where our bodies are patrolled by tiny DNA computers that monitor our well-being and release the right drugs to repair damaged or unhealthy tissue.
Thanks, but I'll leave that up to my white blood cells for now.
few viruses jump species
This is just jibber jabber. Plenty of other badies cross species like bacteria (anthrax), hepatitus, and umm AIDS.
Hmm, although, you could probably keep such a computing system disease free by thoroughly cleaning whatever you put into the system.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
I wonder what will come first with "real" biological machines: "tradional" computing (binary) or a new way of doing things ("quaternary"?). I guess the latter is more likely, since it follows a natural way of doing things...
:-)
Ok guys, let's start studying DNA sequencing. It's not "biology" anymore, it's "programmer's job security".
The ENIAC Demo Competition
be aware that most of this is still future tense, and what these researchers have now is just a proof-of-concept
Good, then there will be something powerful enough to play the "Doom3-killer" Duke Nukem Forever at decent frame rates.
Maybe modern men squeeze too hard.
As many of you have pointed out, DNA computers are not going to replace conventional electronic computers. Len Adleman, the inventor of DNA computing, has said "Despite our successes, and those of others, in the absence of technical breakthroughs, optimism regarding the creation of a molecular computer capable of competing with electronic computers on classical computational problems is not warranted." The problem is partly the effort required to read the answer once the solution is available, and partly the effort required to perform the computation itself. Reading the answer from the first DNA computation took Adleman about a week, and reading the answer from his most recent DNA computation (the largest computation ever performed) took two weeks. The computation itself was very manpower intensive: thousands of precise moves were required of a human experimentor to get the necessary components in a test tube, but once they were all in, the computation itself happened virtually instantly.
Although I have only read the popular accounts of this experiment and not the actual results, this experiment seems to simply be using the ATP in DNA as the power source for the computation instead of external ATP. This is impressive, but it is not the "technical breakthrough" needed to propel DNA computing to the everyday world.
The claim of this computer working 100,000 times faster than a PC is probably true. But this speed comes from the parallelism inherint in DNA computation. When each computer is only 1 molecule in size, it is easy to have 10^10 computers in one tube. But if you do the math, this says that each individual molecule is 100,000 times slower than a PC. So it is equally true to say that my PC is 100,000 times faster than a DNA computer, its just that I can't afford millions of them. This also says that DNA computers are not good for computations that are serial in nature: the speed comes from the fact that DNA computers can run in parallel.
That being said, there may be specific applications for DNA computers in the future. Because of their parallelism, DNA computers are great at solving NP-complete problems (not fuzzy logic problems, as said in the article). This does not make them tractable, however. They run in linear time, but take exponential space. So instead of the problem that "solving this problem will take the age of the universe" you run into the problem "solving this problem will require the mass of the Earth in DNA".
the computer ran a computation, well, quite a few of them, spit out an answer, but because we cant read it, the answer means nothing, since theres no question.
i bet the answer was 42.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
They must have discovered the secret Kaballahscope!
Sort of like these guys did/ 8135.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive
They "took in" a lot of investors, now their web site is gone and so is the money.
DATE: 02 - 23 - 2013
Penguin is injected with Linux powered DNA computer and is dubbed Tux, hopefully will save us from the rampaging HAL - 9000 which was infected and seduced by the www.Newgrounds.com public enemy, Strawberry Clock.
On a side note: Man injects penis with Windows EO Special edition XP Audigy Platinum Chrome Series powered DNA computer in hopes of making love to his computer, is instead enslaved by new tissue manufacturing giant Microsoft.
I feel better now.
-Lucas
>Is it made from Jewish DNA?
No. Pure, plain, old-fashioned kosher DNA.
Is there any way to factor a huge number with DNA computers? Similar to how that travelling salesman problem was solved, you could put every prime encoded into DNA, add em together in a test tube where they will all be magically multiplied :P, and look for the number you want.
Seems about as plausible as this article anyway...
Well, I don't know about inferior PCs, but this isn't 100,000 times faster than the fastest G4. The fastest Apple G4 is the Dual 1.42 GHz. It has a peak performance of 21 Gigaflops, or 21 billion operations per second. Now let's break that down:
- Divide 21 by 2, since there are 2 processors after all = 10.5 Billion ops per second for one G4.
- Working in Billions, 330,000/10.5 = 31428.57
As you can see, the DNA computer is only 31,428.57 times faster than the fastest G4. The MHz (GHz) Myth is destroyed once again. Go Apple!Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
My brain can do 330 trillion calculations per second, ha, I can even do 700 trillion on a decent day, but I just choose not too... will this new computer have similar flaws?
Some scientists predict a future where our bodies are patrolled by tiny DNA computers that monitor our well-being and release the right drugs to repair damaged or unhealthy tissue.
Wow - Great idea! We could call it the "immune system!" What will those scientists think of next?
This will be true now and in the future. Duh. Exercise to the reader: think why this is so.
"Some scientists predict a future where our bodies are patrolled by tiny DNA computers that monitor our well-being and release the right drugs to repair damaged or unhealthy tissue."
WOW - that's incredible! You know what? They should call it the "immune system!"
What will those scientists think of next?
Oh yeah, and I think that simple life forms will be made with this technology and some idiot scientist will think he's all bad-ass, until the damn thing morphs into some wicked, evil thing right out of hell like something in Doom II and it will turn into a three-headed huge dinosaur-like creature, about the size of Godzilla or something, and it'll go stomping around and smashing up all of human civilization until there is literally nothing left in the world except for these things fighting amongst themselves. And that day will be called Armageddon, the end of all things. Oh well. For now, all I need is another Negra Modelo.
If you didn't get what the hell I was talking about in the first paragraph, please allow me to summarize it right here:
The processors in our computers will someday consist of the following technologies, combined as outlined in the aforementioned articles:
Some interesting information, found at the National Nanotechnology Initiative's site, at http://www.nano.gov/nsetmem.htm, which lists the member participants:
PARTICIPANTS: NSET Members
Chair: M.C. Roco, NSF
Executive Secretary: J.S. Murday, NRL
Members: OSTP: S.N. Pace
OMB: D. Radzanowski
CIA: F.D. Gac
DOA: P. Schwab
DOC: C. Campbell, S. Yun,
DOD: W. Berry, J.S. Murday, G.S. Pomrenke
DOE: I.L. Thomas, R. Price, B.G. Volintine
DOJ: D. Boyd, T. DePersia
DOS: R. Braibanti, R. McCreight
DOT: R.R. John, A. Lacombe
DoTREAS: E. Murphy
EPA: L.A. Friedl, S. Lingle
NASA: S. Venneri, M. Hirschbein, M. Dastoor
NIH: J.A. Schloss, E. Kousvelari
NRC: U.S. Bhachu
NIST: P. Casassa, C.R. Snyder, P. Looney
NSF: M.C. Roco, T.A. Weber, M.P. Henkart.
According to the Nanoindustries site at http://www.nanoindustries.com/, Nanotechnology can provide vast benefits above and beyond what is being experimented with today. For example:
For those of you interested in Quantum computing, there is an interesting book by Braunstein... you can find more information about it at http://www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/~schmuel/book/ book1.html.
With the Bush Administration streamlining services to help U.S. businesses grow, I think I can go ahead and have my Negra Modelo now.
This post has been composed of serious material, funny material, crap, and useful information. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please call us toll free by paying us the sum of One Hundred Million Dollars ($100,000,000.00 USD) to receive our toll free voice telephone number, or simply email us by using the best email application on the market, Microsoft Outlook.
It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. It's time for another beer. And I'm going to have a Negra Modelo. Or two. Or three. Or four. Or five..... I have too much time on my hands.
There is one thing I've been wondering about, with regards to such massively parallel DNA computers as this. Could someone use it in an attempt to figure out the most likely first steps in the evolution of life on Earth? It seems to me to be a problem needing such massive parallelism as these DNA computers could provide.
Just curious.
--mja
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030303/story3. html
There are very few fruits of the world experts, I'm very glad that you're one of them. Tell me what part of a lilikoi you eat and I'll give you a cookie!
You should check these two columns, DNA supercomputers in our future? and DNA Computing to learn more about the limitations of DNA computing. For example, Len Adleman, a professor at the University of Southern California, says "that DNA computers will never be able to rival their electronic counterparts for speed without an unforeseen scientific breakthrough, he does think that they have a future niche. One day, a DNA computer programmed to react to the presence of a toxin, such as cancer, could be embedded into a cell. When it detects the toxin, the computer would respond by directing the cell to replicate and chemoluminesce or "glow." The glow could be seen with the naked eye allowing for early disease detection and saving lives."
Oh no! My lab report got autoclaved! :-)
That's great stuff. When is your album coming out?
Psh, can it run a bot that can beat Manowar at Quake 1 Matador?
Banaaaana!
You do? Based on what evidence? Hear say? Speculation? Carbon dating? Educated "guesses"? Theory? Hypothesis?
The latest models of neuron behavior allow the room for 'paralel computing':
The neuron sends information in the exact location-in-time of the firing, as compared to other firings and firings from other neurons
So, a firing is not a "1" bit, but more like a number, signifying when it was shot.
I think the shape and size of the shot matter too, but I'm talking temporal here. I'm getting somewhere, trust me
If a neuron fires 100 times a second, you can think of it as an 'analog array' lengthing a second, and filled with up to 100 'spots' or 'points' - the actual firings
Neurons make computation from the firings of connected neurons, and from the firings' temporal proximity.
For instance, there exists a layer on the vision cortex (in cats, I believe. But prolly humans too) in which each neuron is connected to a 'line' (many neurons forming a line on the cortex itself), and fires up as firings proceed in a certain order, in a certain time.
Therefor, the neuron only fires when there is movement in a certain direction (and will strongly abstain from firing if the movement is the other way)
So, basically, my point is 'yeah'.
A neuron firing sends many different signals to many different neurons, because each of them sees the signal differently, having gotten different firings from other neurons they connect to.
So when you think of a neuron's connections to other neurons (the synapses, lag on synapse, etc.) you can think of them as asking "what is the meaning of this neuron's firing, in time? Does it reinforce what is happening right now, or supresses?". If the neuron's firing has no relevancy in time, the connection is not really made (its weight is 0 - no connection).
My other
My favorite quote - "Also, it can only answer yes or no to a question. It can't, for example, correct a misspelled word."
For some reason i think all cpu's only can answer yes or no to questions....
In this column, you'll find my comments on both the "Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes" article, published by National Geographic News and "New DNA Computer Functions sans Fuel" story provided by Scientific American. But more importantly, you'll find the real *meat*, the abstract of the research conducted by the scientists of the Weitzmann Institute of Science. It is published in today's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Look, this comment has nothing to do with Israel's politics or religion. However, I'd venture to say that 2/3ds of nonsense slashdot science articles begin with "an israeli company..."
Either it's encryption that can be run recursively to one bit or something else completely off the charts ("100000 times faster than current..."), frankly, ive come to thinking htat israel is the land of bad science and reported hype.
I guess they have they cloned a human being.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain the computer really is performing 330 trillion operations per second.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Also, as the Nat'l Geo. article says, one of the best applications for this technique would be in calculating "fuzzy" problems where you would like to compute many possible solutions and then find the correct one. While it is true that this might speed up the actual calculation of the individual results, there would still be the issue of searching through all the results for the optimal or desired answer, which is no trivial task if you have just a heap of several tens of millions of unsorted inputs. Ultimately, as they allude to, this might become a kind of fancy "co-processor" for certain types of problems in high-end computing, but I have trouble seeing this as a realistic solution for the desktop.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Will such a computer be what it takes to play Doom III at tolerable rate?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I did some searching and got two of the articles:
Israeli AI System "Hal" And The Turing Test
I've also noticed this "bullshit storm" and would like to know why they are doing this.
We're both wrong. The proper spelling is "semitic", so many pardons. I guess /. has been a terrible influence on my spelling.
Why bother.
"100,000 times faster then today's PCs"
Try "100,000 times faster THAN today's PCs". Sheesh. This error is creeping into books and magazines, too. I dread the day the linguists give up and just list "then" and "than" as alternate spellings for each other.
- Jasen.
I'm timothy and I have a rare bone-marrow disease that prevents me fom typing the letter R in fom.
Karma: NaN
try and represent an irrational number in a PC and see just how universal the computers we are using now are....
A couple years ago /. ran a story about Israel developing a quantum computer that rendered all modern cryptographic systems obsolete. Man, those guys over there sure are busy.
Call me when the vapor clears...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
They're revolutionizing the industry just about their speed ratings! Since it isn't a fully functioning computer you follow the number by a minus, but since it's a future prediction you add an additional plus sign. I didn't read the article for a prediction as to WHEN it will run that fast, perhaps that goes between the signs:
330000000-365+
Or maybe you just divide it out:
1000000-+
Hmmm, I wonder what AMD has to say about this.
8-PP
They claim that this DNA computer can perform over 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of current computers, but wouldn't you have to take into account the time it took to setup and read the answer?
..they'll need to engineer a soul so they'll have an Operating System.
Anybody remember this thing? almost as fast as the DNA computer.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The article mentioned liquid-mixing to get results. So did your color-changing scheme. We all must consider the energy required to move these dense liquids and mix them. Do you set up the protiens (i.e. program the DNA computer) for one calculation at a time, by hand, in your kitchen? Of course not. So to inject these chemicals and fluids at any automated level would require the very electrical systems (and electronic logic to power them) these scientists are postulating to eliminate. The speed benefit is undeniable, but likewise is the notion that you cannot eliminate the current electrical/electronic technology to make it useful.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
330 trillion ops/s at what size? and for how long? i believe that genes have to be sequenced for input, which could make this very slow indeed.
"Hey Ed, are we ready to go with the new program?"
"Yeah we'll try a run shortly... I just need to incubate these cultures so the input can propagate."
is anybody considering a mod_dna for apache?
so how much does this cost, does it run maco SeX?
Sir my computer has a virus and it has spread to the classroom, no really.
I remember reading about protein computer concept in OMNI back in the early eighties. The idea was to build a computer with proteins with the possibility of merging it directly to the brain.
Writing software and compiling it to DNA would really be interesting. So what happens if the compile is good and the algorithm is not? Potentially create life? Or maybe a virus? Literally!
As I recall the company was based in Boston.
Dog Star Warrior
in DOD terms that is only one degree shy of a hardened and "final" implementation. However, since this is obvious progress then it is obviously not a US DOD project... they probably had an annoying lack of the literal army of do-nothing middlemen getting in the way and trying to sign their own name to "changes" to say "Yep, we did this even though we know not what it is or care what it will result in"
So it's not realtime. Cut us biotechnologists some slack here, you couldn't play Quake on ENIAC either (though I'm sure somebody tried to - "Lag! Lag! Switch the plugs faster!").
Freedom: "I won't!"
No, there is no way a virus from your DNA computer could ever infect you.
Look at a normal virus; it enters your cell and hijacks the cellular machinery to copy itself a zillion times. It may effect the DNA already in the cell, but only to carry out its other goals.
Now look at a DNA virus. There are certain DNA sequences in your genome that can copy over themselvs to other locations when DNA is copied, just like a computer virus. A DNA computer would be vulnerable to this and you are too, but the only way to be infected is from your parents, so you don't have to worry about a DNA computer infecting you... well, at least not accidentally (can't forget retroviruses).
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
You also have to include that each brain cell on the average may touch 1,000 - 10,000 other brain cells. Each connection is at least an op. So it is more on the order of quadrillions of ops, or peta-ops in metric terminology. Still, IBM plans a general-purpose system of this order in the 2010s decade.
At any given time there are special purpose computers that run thousands of times faster the fastest generally programmable computer of the era. However, you can only do a very limited set of problems on the special purpose machines.
The amusing thing is that frequently by the time an entrepeneur engineers more generality into the special machine, the mass-market computers have caught up. I've seen this happen many times in the supercomputer industry- Saxpy, Masspar, Thinking Machines, Tera, etc.
I'm just reading a novel by Bruce Sterling called "Distraction". In his semi-distopian future, where humanity's dreams of reaching Mars is mutated into Earth-based terraforming, bio-research is the new frontier. The anti-hero of the novel is the human equivalent of today's genetically modified foods. He receives an organic watch, powered by mouse brain, as a present from his love-interest, a Nobel prize-winning scientist involved in (obviously) genetic research.
Sieg Heil !!
Why do people believe the never ending stream of LIES from this terrorist country??
Yes, they may be CLEVER but they are not SMART....
John 8:44, "You are of your father, the DEVIL and ye do his works"
it will be much less expensive than the havoc wreaked by any terrorist attacks with the weapons Saddam is hiding.