Computing Inside a Living Cell

First time accepted submitter Rozanne writes "The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine has a story on Stanford professor Drew Endy's creation of microscopic computers out of biological components for use inside living cells. His work is a mash-up of molecular biology and computer engineering: Instead of a computer made of silicon, metal and plastic, it's a computer made of DNA, RNA and enzymes. Endy says biologists are typically confounded at first when he explains how the computers work and how they could be used."

Comments

Re:Endy is no longer the leader in this field

[Gravis Zero]

His analogies to computer engineering are mostly false, as biology operates according to physical and chemical rules. Not Ohm's Law. Not digital logic. You can engineer biology to mimic digital logic, but it's truly analog governed by biomolecular interactions and stochastic dynamical processes.

(human) brains are both analog and digital simultaneously.

even if you argue it's really all analog, the fact that you can mentally process digital logic means that you are digital computer... with lots of extra features. :)